A newborn with a fever waited five hours to be seen by an emergency physician near Toronto.

Patients were surrounded by garbage and urine as they waited 18 to 20 hours for care at a hospital in Fredericton.

And in Alberta, Red Deer's long-beleaguered hospital was forced to hang tarps to create makeshift treatment spaces.

Those headlines come from different hospitals and different provinces. But they all point to the same grim problem: Emergency rooms are overflowing while an array of respiratory illnesses — COVID-19 included — keep circulating. And it's happening against a backdrop of behind-the-scenes backlogs that turn front-line ERs into dangerous choke points.

The numbers are staggering. More than 10,000 people are in hospital at once across B.C., the most the province has ever seen, while Quebec grapples with the highest level of patients in its emergency rooms in five years.

In Ottawa, the Queensway Carleton Hospital recently said it was operating at 115 per cent occupancy. By midweek, most Montreal emergency rooms were above full capacity, with some operating at roughly 200 per cent.