Hospitals in the Windsor area are ready for any surge in COVID-19 cases.
That's according to the CEOs of the three major hospitals in the region -Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, and Erie Shores Healthcare - all of whom participated in a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday afternoon.
"From a hospital in-patient side, things are stable at this moment and better than what was projected for this time. But again, we can't rest until we play this out for at least a couple, three weeks to see where this heads," said David Musyj, CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital.
There are currently 11 patients on ventilators at Windsor Regional Hospital, more than any other region in the province outside of the Greater Toronto Area. Musyj confirmed there is a good supply of ventilators in the hospital system should there be a further surge of patients.
"We are well equipped and we've increased our critical care capacity rather dramatically, ourselves and Erie Shores as well and Chatham and Bluewater so we did all that work so we're sitting well on all those fronts," said Musyj.
Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is currently at 84 per cent capacity after it took on many patients from acute care sites to make room for the potential surge of COVID-19 patients. It has created additional bed space and hired an additional 63 staff to help handle the patient load.
"From a perspective from our staff, they are feeling pretty confident that our system is ready, the system is prepared, that our partners in acute care have got it all together, they're doing what they need to do and they are feeling really good about that," said Janice Kaffer from Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare. "We are as prepared as we can be and we just hope that what our acute partners are talking about in terms of not seeing the big surge will actually transpire."
At Erie Shores Healthcare, there is currently only one positive COVID-19 patient admitted. CEO Janice Dawson said she expects they may be seeing additional patients as the new assessment centre comes on board at the hospital Thursday.
"We're optimistic that we're not seeing that big surge as was projected but at the same time, we recognize we can't take our foot off the gas and have to continue to be prepared and monitor those numbers going forward. So relatively thinking we're not in bad shape but we still don't know what the future holds," Dawson said.
The hospital officials say they have multiple plans in place to ensure all patients are seen where they will get the best possible care.
