Suspect with virus admitted to ICU

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This article was published 14/05/2021 (1069 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police officers arrested a suspect who was so sick with COVID-19 he had to be admitted to intensive care.

While the service wouldn’t comment about the incident due to privacy reasons, Winnipeg Police Association president Maurice Sabourin said: “The prisoner likely would not have gone to hospital voluntarily unless in our custody. This potentially saved his life.”

He said officers had arrested a man and taken him to the central processing unit inside police headquarters last week.

“The person came in and said he had earlier tested positive for COVID,” he said.

“All of our people were covered up with PPE so no one had to go home and isolate. There is a paramedic in (the unit) 24 hours a day and it was observed there were some complications, so the decision was made to take them to hospital right away.

“My information is the person then went to the ICU.”

The police service is dealing with an outbreak among staff at its downtown headquarters. On Friday, there were 20 active cases, and 69 people were listed as recovered.

Sabourin said 29 other staffers couldn’t go to work because they had to isolate.

Meanwhile, Sabourin said officers have been getting vaccinated since the province decided to prioritize front-line police officers and firefighters.

“They scrambled to get appointments,” he said, noting there was no special vaccine clinic for both services. “We don’t know how many have received the vaccine, but we are happy our members were prioritized.

“It’s because of incidents like what happened in CPU that we wanted to be vaccinated.”

— Kevin Rollason