Waterloo Region & Wellington County | February 25, 2022
Click here to read the Waterloo Wellington COVID Report for Friday, February 25, 2022 that local hospitals have committed to jointly providing weekly throughout Omicron.
As hospitalizations for COVID-positive patients stabilizes locally, so too does the number of staff impacted by COVID. Regional hospitals began providing these reports to provide an accurate and timely look at the challenges our sector faced. As the impact of Omicron decreases and the province plans for further re-opening on March 1st, we will no longer issue these weekly reports. We remain available to the media and COVID related metrics are accessible through the ROW and WDG Public Health Units.
Some of our hospitals continue to deal with active outbreaks, reminding us that although the number of COVID-positive cases is declining, we must continue to take every possible precaution to protect our patients and staff. Vaccines are an important part of our strategy to reduce transmission and severity of COVID-19. As the province moves next week to further loosen public health measures and restrictions, as higher-risk settings, proof of vaccination will still be required in hospitals beyond March 1st for all staff, physicians, volunteers and Care Partners. This approach for higher risk settings such as hospitals was addressed by the Chief Medical Officer of Health at the February 24th briefing.
By taking all possible steps available to us to protect our staff and patients, this will allow hospitals to focus our resources on ramping up long-awaited surgeries and procedures that were paused through the pandemic. Resuming scheduled care is a priority for all hospitals, as we understand the importance of providing these much-needed procedures for our patients. However, with bed capacity gaps in our region that existed prior to COVID, we do anticipate ongoing occupancy pressures.
All local hospitals have nearly fully resumed diagnostic imaging and endoscopy. For remaining surgeries and procedures, hospitals will be opening more Operating Room capacity in the coming days and weeks. As of today, local hospitals report the following percentage of surgeries have been resumed:
- Cambridge Memorial Hospital is at 47%, and expected to reach 62% reach next week;
- Guelph General Hospital fluctuates daily between 37.5% and 50% with a planned increase over the coming weeks;
- Grand River Hospital is at 71% including cancer, urgent/emergent and elective surgeries, focusing on the highest need cases first. As the Regional Cancer Centre, last week’s data included significant cancer and endoscopy cases prioritized for the first week of resumption;
- Mary’s General Hospital is at 51% with a goal of reaching 70% in March; and
- Wellington Healthcare Alliance is at 75%.
“Each wave of the pandemic brings new challenges but one thing that remained constant was our collective and continued dedication to supporting patients as a system of care across our communities,” says Lee Fairclough, Regional Hospital Lead for COVID response and President, St. Mary’s General Hospital. “Although each hospital’s ability to ramp up will vary slightly based on unique areas of specialty, we will continue to move forward as a system of care. In continuing to support one another in smoothing capacity issues across our hospitals, we will work together towards our first collective goal of 70% of major surgeries resumed to support our patients.”
More Information:
Stephan Beckhoff
Manager, Public Affairs & Communications
Cambridge Memorial Hospital
sbeckhoff@cmh.org
t: 519-621-2333 ext. 2427
m: 519-654-8334
Cheryl Evans
Manager, Communications and
Engagement
Grand River Hospital
cheryl.evans@grhosp.on.ca
t: 519-749-4300 ext. 3880
m: 226-749-0689
Alison Armstrong
Manager, Communications and
Stakeholder Relations
Wellington Health Care Alliance
Groves Memorial Community Hospital
North Wellington Health Care
aarmstrong@whca.ca
519-843-2010 ext. 47614
Perry Hagerman
Senior Communications Specialist
Guelph General Hospital
PHagerman@gghorg.ca
519-837-6440 ext. 2774
Dayna Giorgio
Manager, Communications
St. Mary’s General Hospital
dgiorgio@smgh.ca
519-895-6540