Things are starting to feel more normal around the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance these days.

CEO Lori Marshall says after weeks of cancellations and delays and with the medicine unit COVID outbreak over, day surgeries have resumed.

“The announcement came last week that we could start to move towards starting up with our inpatient surgeries again, but we already had a full slate of people booked,” Marshall says. “So this week we proceeded with primarily out-patient day surgeries and a few specific in-patient surgeries.”

Next week, the hospital will get back to what Marshall calls relatively normal operations.

“A mixture of in-patient and out-patient day surgeries, and the full use of our ORs and the full use of our surgical beds.”

Marshall says it’s a good feeling to be able to properly meet the community’s needs.

The latest figures show the ICU at the CKHA is only 20% full, while the hospital’s medical, surgical, and critical care beds are just under 77% occupied.