Even as COVID cases start to inch down across Ontario, it could be a while yet before hospitals province-wide return to any sense of normalcy.
Health Alliance CEO Lori Marshall says elective and non-emergency surgeries are still on hold.
“What this has allowed is for us to maintain our occupancy around that 80-85% while we take in patients from elsewhere in the province, primarily the GTA,” Marshall explains. “But also sometimes what has to happen is a person goes from the GTA to Windsor, and then Windsor needs to decant to us, it’s kind of a whole load-balancing, is what they’re calling it, across the province.”
Marshall says while COVID cases across Ontario are starting to plateau, the strain on hospitals remains very high.
“A typical surgical patient might be in the hospital 3-5 days if they have to be admitted. Our COVID patients may be here 2-3 weeks. So all of a sudden if you start to think about how many surgical patients we might normally see in a two week period compared with the number of COVID patients, you can understand that even though numbers may be coming down, it’s going to take us a while before we will be actually able to respond and be able to ramp back up again.”
There are currently eight COVID patients at CKHA, four of whom are from areas outside Chatham-Kent. Three of those eight patients are being treated in the ICU, two of whom are on ventilators.
Marshall says CKHA is accepting roughly one patient transfer every day or two as hospitals in COVID-hotspots remain overwhelmed.