The Dryden Regional Health Centre continues to monitor staffing levels.
Hospitals across the province are seeing unprecedented shortages due to the highly contagious Omicron COVID-19 variant.
President and CEO Doreen Armstrong Ross says they’ve been fortunate so far and have a 99% staff vaccination rate.
“Our bigger challenge staffing wise will be staff that are exposed and become positive and have to be off for some time. The mandatory vaccine policy is really a negligible affect on our staffing.”
Armstrong Ross adds they are fortunate that they aren’t in a position right now to make decisions around services but stresses they remain vigilant.
“We are seeing patients in the organization that are COVID positive absolutely and we expect that we’ll probably see more and more as it becomes more prevalent with Omicron. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve had precautions in place for both patients and our staff to maintain safety and be able to, at the same time, care for everybody.”
As of January 5, the Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora was at their lowest staffing level since before the pandemic due to various reasons.
