Cornwall Community Hospital Managing Omicron Variant
2022-01-18
Cornwall
Community Hospital (CCH) continues to manage the latest wave of the pandemic
caused by the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19.
There are
currently 45 patients with COVID-19 admitted at CCH, and nearly half of the
hospital’s Critical Care Unit is currently occupied by COVID-19 patients. This
is the most patients with COVID-19 to ever be admitted at CCH. Unvaccinated
individuals continue to suffer from the most severe forms of illness.
The Omicron
variant also continues to impact hospital staffing; as of January 17, there are
33 employees at home with COVID-19.
CCH is following
the provincial government’s direction to postpone non-urgent activity, as
required to free up resources, and has started to redeploy clinical staff to
new areas where their skills are needed to ensure patients can continue to receive the care they need amidst staffing
shortages.
Additional
temporary spaces have also been identified to become care areas if needed, and
hospital visitation has been restricted to the highest levels except for some
exceptional circumstances.
“As the current
COVID-19 situation continues to evolve, this wave is unlike anything we’ve seen
throughout this pandemic at our hospital,” explains Jeanette Despatie, CCH
President and Chief Executive Officer. “But our community can rest assured that
we are implementing measures to address the rising number of patients, minimize
the impact on our staff and ensure we can continue to provide care to our
community,” adds Despatie.
CCH would also
like to remind the community to be kind and respectful to frontline healthcare
workers as staff and physicians are being confronted with more anger and
inappropriate abusive behaviours from patients and families.
“Everyone is
doing everything they can at this unprecedented time. Our staff and physicians
have been working tirelessly, picking up more hours, being redeployed to new
areas, falling ill, following extra precautions, and caring for more patients.
When visiting the hospital, we ask that you treat our staff and physicians with
respect,” says Despatie.
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