As patients are shipped out of hospitals in COVID hotspots across the province, including some coming to be treated at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, questions have been raised about community safety and the possibly of moving patients to the as yet unused field hospital at St Clair College.
Even with more patients being transferred out of COVID hotspots across Ontario, Health Alliance CEO Lori Marshall says they have no need for overflow capacity at this point.
“At this stage, we would not be using the field hospital, although it remains in place for us to access if required, primarily because it does need to be a certain level of patients that could be cared for safely there because there’s no access to diagnostics and some of those kinds of things.”
Marshall says the field hospital has always been meant as a last resort, and locally we’re not there yet.
“I’ve always referred to it as our insurance policy if necessary, but we do believe right now we have the capacity in hospital to respond to our local needs and also to transfers in with the changes that have now been made with respect to reduction in elective surgeries.”
Province-wide, there are 869 patients being treated for COVID-19 in ICU units across Ontario.
The latest numbers from CKHA show the ICU is sitting at 77.3% occupancy; medical, surgical, and critical care beds are 78.8% filled; and to date, seven patients have been transferred from other hospitals in the province. CKHA officials say there are seven COVID-positive patients being treated in hospital, and figures from Public Health show two of those patients are Chatham-Kent residents.
Following a directive from Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, CKHA announced on Friday all non-urgent and non-emergent surgeries and procedures were being cancelled. However, a statement from CKHA says it will rely on the clinical judgement of its surgeons to make informed decisions on which cases should be allowed to proceed.
Marshall says having other options, like moving alternate level of care patients into long term care when spots are available and caring for patients at home when they can, alleviates some of the pressure on hospital beds.