Already severely exhausted healthcare teams are struggling with what doctors call the "new normal" of seasonal diseases, which are: a wave of viral and bacterial infections that have all returned to spread - in addition to the coronavirus.

For his part, Dr. Lori Plotnick, medical director of the emergency department at Montreal Children's Hospital, where the average occupancy rate approaches 160 percent for most of November.

Children arriving suffer from a variety of illnesses, from fever to bronchitis to pneumonia, according to officials. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) activity is increasing at higher-than-expected levels, and influenza activity is also rising. Meanwhile, the coronavirus remains widely spread.

In the same context, Lisa Salamon, an emergency physician in Toronto, said: "In addition to the already high baseline, we are now seeing the arrival of all common respiratory diseases in the fall, along with COVID, which did not exist four years ago."