Skip to content

Hospital COVID-19 outbreak contained, more ICU patients moving

There does not appear to be further spread from an outbreak of COVID-19 in the 1A Medicine Unit, as the hospital diverts more ICU patients to southern Ontario
Hospital Winter

THUNDER BAY - An outbreak of COVID-19 in a Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre unit is being managed, say hospital officials, but the situation in the facility remains critical as more patients are being transported from the ICU to southern Ontario.

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre declared an outbreak of COVID-19 in the 1A Medicine Unit late last week and went into a grey lockdown status.

According to Dr. Peter Voros, the COVID-19 incident management team lead with the TBRHSC, four patients have tested positive in the 24-bed unit, but there does not appear to be any further spread.

The cause of the outbreak is still under investigation in collaboration with the Thunder Bay District Health Unit.

“Certainly, any time there is an outbreak, we take that very seriously,” Voros said. “We basically lock the unit down and start to trace to make sure whatever spreading hasn’t spread beyond that unit. We have been able to trace to ensure that hasn’t happened.”

“When a unit is in outbreak, we treat everyone in the unit as a possible positive. Every patient has been tested and there are no additional positive patients. For two weeks we are not admitting anyone new to the unit. Everyone is getting the care that they need to and the staff is functioning very well. The difficult thing for the hospital is it takes those beds out of operation for us for two weeks.”

This is partly why the hospital moved into the grey level, as it allows for patients and staff to transition to ensure there is enough space and human resources to continue to operate.

And while patients continue to receive care and emergent procedures are performed, the high number of COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital is still a concern.

As of Monday, there were 44 patients admitted to the TBRHSC with COVID-19, with 11 of those in the Intensive Care Unit. The dedicated COVID-19 unit has a capacity of 49 beds and there is room for further expansion.

The ICU capacity is 22-beds and there are plans in place to expand the unit if needed. Several patients are already being treated outside of the designated unit and patients have been diverted to other hospitals.

“To date we have redirected five patients from the region who would typically come to Thunder Bay for ICU care to the east and south,” Voros said.

“We have taken five additional patients from our ICU and transferred them to the south. This is all an effort to make sure the hospital doesn’t become overwhelmed and to make sure we are prepared for what is in front of us, and we are. We’ve created the space we need and freed up the staff we need to provide both the emergent care and COVID care that we need.”

There are plans to divert more patients in the coming days based on decisions made by the provincial Critical Care Command Centre, which works with hospitals across Ontario to ensure they are not overwhelmed when COVID-19 admissions get too high.  

“They have told us they will attempt to move one to two patients today, tomorrow, and Wednesday and then we will reevaluate where we are and what is going on in the community,” Voros said.

The hospital is also putting elective procedures, such as knee or hip replacements, on hold and it has reduced the number of operating rooms from 11 to six, a decision Voros said the hospital does not take very lightly.

“Any additional surgeries, whether they be elective either inpatient or outpatient will be stopped in order to free up both space and staff,” he said.

“We really hope we will only need to do this for a few weeks to deal with what is in front of us right now. Hopefully as a community we will come together and socially isolate ourselves, wear our masks, get vaccinated. These are the efforts we need to do as a community to get through this.”



Doug Diaczuk

About the Author: Doug Diaczuk

Doug Diaczuk is a reporter and award-winning author from Thunder Bay. He has a master’s degree in English from Lakehead University
Read more


Comments

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks