By Cecilia Nasmith
As the third wave of COVID-19 sweeps Ontario and provincial restrictions take effect, Northumberland Hills Hospital President and Chief Administrative Officer Linda Davis expressed confidence that the hospital is ready in her report to the April board meeting.
“I think what we are hearing again, from the ministry and from critical care experts, is that there is concern because of the high virulence of the variants of concern,” Davis said.
“And speaking to my colleague in Quinte, they had 38 new cases overnight, from yesterday to today.
“And that's Quinte – not very far away.”
In Northumberland Hills Hospital, Davis added, the situation can be summed up in four words - “high occupancy, high acuity.”
Senior staff had already begun planning for the provincial restrictions that were announced earlier that day.
“Much of it is already in place, given all the planning we have done in Wave One and Wave Two, so it was a matter of pulling those things out again,” she said.
“Our biggest concern is capacity of our ICU – not only for COVID patients but regular community members who may become quite ill and require intensive care.”
And there is the requirement by the province to take in ICU patients from communities whose ICU capacity is overextended. NHH has received a handful of these cases as well.
While Northumberland-Peterborough South MPP David Piccini has announced that the Cobourg Wal-Mart Pharmacy and Port Hope's Pharmasave will be giving vaccinations to qualifying members of the public, board member Starr Olsen asked Davis if she knew anything about this. She'd had calls from members of the public who failed to get appointments via this route. Depending on whom they speak with, Olsen said, they are told they have no vaccine supply or even that they were unaware they were offering the service.
Davis had no clarification to offer on this. She had also heard that certain primary-care practices would also be giving vaccinations, but had no details on this either as yet.
Looking ahead, a spot of sunshine is on the horizon with the April 6 opening of the clinic in Colborne, made possible thanks to the broad range of partnerships in the Ontario Health Team-Northumberland. Davis said this project is attracting a great deal of interest as to how they could accomplish such a feat in such a small rural community.
