KITCHENER -- Hospitals in Waterloo Region and Guelph are running out of space in the ICU as COVID-19 cases continue to climb.
Provincial officials said Tuesday that one in four hospitals in Ontario have no ICU beds available.
St. Mary's General Hospital, Guelph General Hospital and Cambridge Memorial Hospital all said they have one to two ICU beds left. Grand River Hospital has three or more available.
Lee Fairclough, the hospital lead for Waterloo-Wellington, said a Toronto-area patient was transferred to Waterloo Region last week and two more were sent on Monday.
"Part of that is that we could be in a similar situation in the future," Fairclough said. "We are trying to help each other."
Ontario released new modelling data on Tuesday, saying the province is on-track to possibly see more than 10,000 new cases a day by early February.
"We are at a dangerous point," said Dr. Adalsteinn Brown. "The number of cases are growing between three per cent and five per cent."
There are currently 400 patients in the ICU with COVID-19 in Ontario. Modelling suggests that number could hit 1,000, leading to tough choices by health professionals.
"They will be choices about who will get the care they need and who will not," Dr. Brown said. "It will be choices about who receives oxygen or is transported to hospital."
Chris Bauch, a modelling expert from the University of Waterloo, said local case counts and hospitalizations will follow provincial projections.
"We've seen recent trends very much following the provincial trends," he said. "We've seen really quick accelerations of cases, especially in the past month."
Officials said a new and more contagious U.K. variant could make things worse. There are 14 confirmed cases in Ontario.
The province announced a new stay-at-home order on Tuesday, which comes into effect on Thursday at 12:01 a.m.
