The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) says it may take a while for elective surgeries to resume as normal, even though it looks like the Omicron wave has hit its peak across the province.
CKHA CEO Lori Marshall said CKHA is still waiting for official direction from the province.
She believes that diagnostics and ambulatory clinics will be the first to return but doesn't think elective surgeries will return in the first phase. Marshall said not being able to perform elective surgeries for so long is stressful not only for patients, but for staff as well.
"While we may have seen the peak, we continue to have a number of patients in hospital being treated with COVID. So, we do need the numbers to come down further and staff returning to work," said Marshall. "Knowing that we have not been able to progress with that care is something that is difficult for all of us to work through."
She said the surgical backlog at CKHA will take at least a year to resolve once operations get back to normal. Marshall also said that unlike some other hospitals, no local urgent or emergency surgeries have been cancelled because of a shortage of beds.
On Monday, Marshall reported another COVID-19 patient died at the Chatham hospital on Sunday. The patient was a 78-year-old woman and was not a resident of Chatham-Kent, according to hospital officials.
Marshall also reported 27 COVID-19 patients are in the hospital with 10 of them being treated primarily for the virus. The other COVID-19 patients were admitted for other illnesses and then tested positive. Marshall also said there are also four COVID-19 patients in the ICU and three of them are on ventilators.
Marshall said 48 staff are off work because they have the virus or are isolating as a precaution because they were in close contact with someone who is contagious. She said 51 staff members are working but are isolating at home, which means they can work because they are not necessarily positive for COVID-19. Marshall said those staff that are work-isolating to maintain hospital staffing levels could have direct contact with a patient, but they wear full personal protective equipment and 100 per cent of the hospital staff and doctors are fully vaccinated. In the event, a hospital staff member becomes positive while work-isolating, then the public health unit would have to trace their contacts, she added.
"We would work with public health to do an assessment of the contacts that that individual would have had in hospital and ensure there would have been no break their personal protective equipment or in the personal protective equipment of anyone that they may have come in contact with," Marshall said.
Marshall also said a proposal to expand the 10 bed ICU by two beds has been sent to the province but she is still waiting for an answer.
She also said that CKHA patients eligible for the anti-viral and monoclonal antibody called Sotrovimab and Paxlovida that can help alleviate more severe COVID-19 symptoms will be sent to Windsor Regional Hospital for that treatment because of the low supply of those medications.
Ontario is reporting 32 new deaths and 2,983 people hospitalized with COVID-19, 583 of them in the ICU.
