It’s a full house of coughing people at emergency departments right across the region lately.
At Timmins and District Hospital, emergency physician Dr. Julie Samson says 75% of cases are for respiratory illnesses or complications from them. She says they could be secondary to not being vaccinated against the flu or COVID. So a six- or eight-hour wait to be seen by a doctor is not unusual.
“If you have symptoms like just the common cold, you’re not going to be seen quicker than the patient with a chest pain or who are more sick,” the doctor advises. “So unfortunately, you’re at the bottom of the wait times for that.”
The doctor adds that a common cold is viral, so you don’t need antibiotics.
There’s always the question of whether you need to be there. Samson says it’s difficult, and has to be considered case-by-case. And then there’s a large number of people with no primary care provider.
“If you’re otherwise a healthy adult with no chronic cardiac respiratory illness and you have nasal congestion, runny nose and a cough lasting less than ten days without significant fevers, you don’t need to be seen. You have the common cold or influenza.”
Dr. Samson adds that the very young and very old are most at risk of becoming sicker.
Listen to our full interview right here.
