Ontario hospitals asked to postpone non-urgent surgeries amid COVID-19 surge

KITCHENER -

The province is asking hospitals to suspend non-urgent surgeries in response to the rising number of COVID-19 cases. 

Ontario has once again broken its single-day record for new infections. A total of 10,436 cases were reported on Wednesday, 13,807 on Thursday, followed by 16,713 cases on Friday.

According to a media release, St. Mary’s General Hospital and Grand River Hospital in Kitchener will only be providing "urgent, emergent and cancer surgical procedures" from Jan. 4 to Jan. 17. It adds that they will also be "maintaining Emergency Department Services, inpatient care, and essential clinics for as long as possible."

The media release also states that hospitals will re-evaluate the situation by Jan. 12, in collaboration with regional partners, Ontario Health and Public Health.

"The pandemic continues to demand that we make difficult choices and certainly the decision to temporarily suspend non-urgent surgeries for patients was not one that we wanted to make, but unfortunately necessary at this time," said Lee Fairclough, the president of St. Mary’s General Hospital, in the release. "We must be prepared for the increased need for COVID-19 care while dealing with limited staff who are also being affected by COVID-19."

During Friday's regional COVID-19 update, Fairclough predicted health care centres would need to redeploy a portion of their workforce over the next few weeks in order to handle an increase in COVID-19 patients.

"Every time we make that choice, it's hard choice," she said. “For those of you that have been waiting for some time for your procedures, I’m sorry that we’re finding ourselves in this situation again.” 

Patients will be contacted by their hospital or physician's office if their procedure has been postponed.

Other hospitals, outside Waterloo Region, are also suspending non-urgent surgeries.

The Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance, which covers Stratford General Hospital, Clinton Public Hospital, St. Mary's Memorial Hospital and Seaforth Community Hospital, announced Thursday they were making changes due to staffing shortages.

"As of [Thursday], almost 80 staff are unavailable to be scheduled to work because they are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms with a test result pending, have tested positive for COVID-19 or have had a high-risk exposure," said Andrew Williams, the HPHA President and CEO, in a release. "With many of the patient care units and supporting departments across our sites already strained for staffing, adjustments need to be made to both allow for the re-assignment of staff and to help reduce the risk of exposures that may lead to additional COVID-19 cases."

He provided additional details to CTV News on Friday.

“It effects our main O.R.’s and we’ll be reducing about 7 O.R. days a week, which is 35 procedures,” Williams said. “We’re doing reductions in endoscopies, which tend to average about 14 a day. Cataracts, we’re looking at cutting those back, as well as any of our surgical ambulatory care and cystoscopies, so it is a significant reduction in activity.”