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Hospital to resume elective surgeries

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre plans to gradually resume elective surgeries, diagnostics beginning Tuesday
Thunder Bay Regional Summer
Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. (tbnewswatch.com/FILE)

THUNDER BAY - Thunder Bay's regional hospital is going ahead with plans to resume elective surgeries and other non-essential services beginning on Tuesday.

Previous plans to resume those services on June 1 had been put on hold after a scare over a possible COVID-19 outbreak at the hospital last week. That came as a result of a doctor who had tested positive for the virus after returning from a residence in eastern Ontario.

The resumption in services will be a "slow, calculated, incremental increase," according to an announcement posted to social media by the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre on Saturday.

"We will start with a 25 per cent recovery in services, and we’ll be looking at when to increase it further," said Dr. Stewart Kennedy, who heads the hospital's COVID-19 response. "We have to look a number of factors like bed capacity, urgency of the surgery, PPE and drug supplies, and staff availability."

The decision to resume the procedures comes as the hospital said results had been returned for the majority of those who had contact with the doctor, and all had tested negative.

“The further postponement of elective surgeries and other services have been the largest, most disturbing result of the recent outbreak at our Hospital,” he said. “But I’m glad to say, because we have the majority of the test results back and they are negative, that we do not have to wait for the other tests to come back – because the risk of this individual was so low that we need to move on and begin to increase our volume of elective surgeries."

Kennedy urged patients not to contact the hospital to inquire about procedures, saying they will be contacted by their physicians based on priority. He also expressed regret at the delay to the procedures due to fears of an outbreak.






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