Waterloo Region & Wellington County | January 28, 2022
Click here to read the Waterloo Wellington COVID Report for Friday, January 28, 2022 that local hospitals have committed to jointly providing on Tuesdays and Fridays.
The data in this week’s report continues to highlight the pressures all of our local hospitals face despite adding more beds, hiring additional staff and the ramp down of non-urgent and non-emergent surgeries and procedures. Though daily trends are variable on COVID admissions, there is some degree of stabilization. However, we continue to see large numbers of patients requiring continued hospital care when they are no longer infectious that doubles the numbers currently staying in hospital for care. This week we have seen an increase again in the number of staff impacted by COVID.
As hospitals must continue to redirect and redeploy resources to care for COVID-positive, it further impacts the ability to ramp up much-needed surgical procedures and services for thousands of patients locally who are waiting.
Yesterday’s announcement signaled a start to some resumption of imaging and surgery largely in non-acute care hospital settings in the community. Most hospitals in the province are still not in a position to resume scheduled surgeries given the ongoing pressure and demands of COVID. For our regional hospitals, Directive 2 remains in place continuing to focus on urgent and emergent procedures. Other procedures such as imaging will be reviewed.
“While many hope that next week’s gradual reopening is the start of a journey out of this pandemic, I need to caution that our local health care system continues to operate under significant pressure. We have been operating under Directive 2, which asked hospitals to reduce non-urgent services and procedures to create extra capacity. Even as the province moves to amend Directive 2 to allow for the resumption of surgeries and procedures, we are unfortunately not in a position to start non-urgent services and procedures,” says Patrick Gaskin, president and CEO, Cambridge Memorial Hospital.
“Specific to Waterloo Wellington, four hospitals are caring for a large number of COVID patients, managing active outbreaks, supporting the emergent care needs of our community, while addressing the challenges of the number of staff off due to COVID. For these reasons, we are unable to begin to ramp up services or relax our visitor policies until these pressures subside. We thank you for your continued support and ask that you remain patient, be kind and stay safe as we work through this wave.”
“As we face ongoing pressure for need for COVID care, both in our region and neighbouring regions, for the near term it will limit the further increase of procedures,” says Lee Fairclough, president, St. Mary’s General Hospital and Waterloo Wellington hospital regional lead, COVID-19 response. “With Omicron, we continue to see high numbers of people impacted, including some of the highest numbers of daily deaths and admissions to ICU yet in the pandemic. We aren’t through this yet. All hospitals are working across our region to help each other to care for high numbers of patients. The vaccine and public health measures continue to be an important part of being able to get there.”
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