Staff at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance are doing the best they can in challenging circumstances. 
That from CEO Lori Marshall, who says the hospital’s team is going above and beyond to keep the community safe.
“In order for us to prepare for presumably what is coming at some stage, we’re trying to help everybody who could possibly move out of hospital into home and community care services or anything like that to do that.”
Marshall says the hospital has gone from 106% occupancy two weeks ago down to 84% this morning.
She stresses the importance of social distancing as the pandemic continues to help prevent the health care system from becoming overwhelmed.
“We know things like personal protective equipment, masks and those kinds of things, there is a shortage across the country,” Marshall says. “We’ve done things like make sure our staff and physicians clearly understand the appropriate use of that, we’ve centralized the stock for that, we’re working through always getting more supplies.”
Meantime, Ontario’s Minister of Health and Long-Term Care says the government is working hard to get ventilators and COVID-19 tests into the health care system as quickly as possible.
Christine Elliot says they are working as hard as they can, and Ontario manufacturers such as Martinrea are ready to help build more.
“I want the people of Ontario to know that we are certainly aware there are going to be tremendous pressures on our health care system and we are building our capacity in terms of hospital beds, health care beds, generally and in ventilators,” Elliot says. “We have a good supply now, but we’re looking to increase it should we need increased capacity, hence the discussions the Premier and others have had with auto-parts manufacturers.”
Elliot says they’ve been working with the federal government to procure supplies and have 50,000 COVID-19 tests ready to be deployed.
