The third wave of COVID-19 has challenged health care systems everywhere including at Quinte Health Care hospitals.
President of QHC Stacey Daub said coronavirus activity has been much higher in recent weeks than ever before, telling the Board of Directors Tuesday that new variants of concern had a lot to do with increased infections causing much more community spread.
“What happens when you have increased community transmission is that you inevitably start to see those transmissions spill over to workplaces, child care centres, shelters, anywhere there are congregate settings.”
Also, due to hospitals being overwhelmed elsewhere, approximately 40 COVID patients out of a total of 172 in the third wave were transferred to Quinte Health Care from outside the area.
Daub said the pandemic has a lot of lessons to teach but the overall response has been good.
“Largely I would say it’s a real success story of the resiliency and the ability of the province to be able to support regionally and provincially.”
Daub told the Board of Directors that the outlook right now is positive as at this point COVID case count and positivity rates have been trending down.
“Hospitalizations are coming down and critical care numbers are coming down but they are not going to go down at the same pace that they went up.”
Meanwhile, QHC’s Chief of Staff Dr. Colin MacPherson told the board that it’s been a remarkable experience to see the staff come together and work through the COVID-19 challenge.
“We’ve had to stretch ourselves and be creative but we’ve done very well as has the overall system in the province.”
MacPherson also said that while everyone appreciated the suffering of those stricken with COVID-19 many other people in the health care system were also seriously affected.
“There are so many other patients that have been displaced in their care, or deferred. Most notably our surgical patients.”
Some elective surgeries have resumed at Trenton Memorial Hospital and plans are in the works for the resumption of surgeries at Belleville General Hospital soon, under strict conditions.
