With Chatham-Kent’s COVID cases continuing to hover in the single digits and vaccination rates on the rise, the conversation has begun over easing visitor restrictions at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance.
“We’re in the process right now of reviewing our visiting and care partner practices,” CEO Lori Marshall says. “You can anticipate that we will be in lock step with other hospitals in our area and in the rest of the province with respect to taking a next stage.”
The CKHA recently opened up outdoor visiting areas at hospitals in Chatham and Wallaceburg.
However, at this point Marshall says no changes to visitor restrictions are imminent.
“I think that we will still not be returning to an open-access to the hospital as we all experienced in the past. It will still be a much more controlled environment with identifying who patients’ visitor are, who are important to them, and facilitating that visitation. But we won’t be, certainly in the near term, opening for people to be able to come in and go to Tim Hortons.”
Marshall says the first change that might be coming sooner than later would be increasing the number of designated care partners each patient can have – right now most patients can have one care partner with some exceptions.
