Dryden Regional Health Centre/CKDR Files
Patients awaiting surgery at the Dryden Regional Health Centre will be contacted if their surgery is postponed.
The provincial government introduced new restrictions on January 3 including the directive to pause all non-emergency surgeries due to rising hospitalizations and ICU admissions due to COVID-19.
“The urgent and emergent, we’re going ahead with those,” says President and CEO Doreen Armstrong Ross. “Definitely some patients may be affected, it’s up to the physician’s criteria and discretion to make those calls. Some patients have heard about procedures being postponed.”
The DRHC does not have a timeline as to when all surgeries and procedures will get the green light to resume.
“Things change and as kids go back to school, it’s constant monitoring of what’s happening within the hospital sector and the province to make determination of when these restrictions can be lifted,” Armstrong Ross added. “This is a provincial initiative and the reason for it is two fold, because of the health human resources shortages across the province as well as the number of patients being seen in hospital and in hospital beds with COVID, particularly the Omicron.”
As of January 20th, 4,132 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in Ontario.
53% were admitted for COVID-19 and 47% were admitted for other reasons but have also tested positive.
82% of patients admitted to the ICU were admitted for the virus and 18% were admitted for other reasons but have tested positive.
Individuals who are fully vaccinated represent 78.5% of Ontario’s total population and account for 224 of Ontario’s 589 ICU admissions.
Regional hospitalizations are provided in Thursday’s Northwestern Health Unit update.
Non-urgent surgeries and procedures have been put on the back burner several times throughout the pandemic, with the last pause in April 2021.
Premier Doug Ford is set to make an announcement this morning at 10:30 central, with multiple reports saying, about the lifting of restrictions.
