Windsor Regional Hospital cancelling non-urgent surgeries

Windsor Regional Hospital has made what it called a "difficult but necessary" decision to cancel some surgeries as its facilities grapple with the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The hospital said Friday that non-urgent procedures that require a bed will be postponed as of Monday due to an increase in COVID-19 patients in hospital and a "potentially critical" shortage of acute-care beds.

Day surgeries are going ahead, and OBGYN procedures and cancer surgeries have been prioritized along with emergency or urgent surgeries.

 Anyone affected will be contacted, the hospital said.

The hospital's chief of staff Dr. Wassim Saad told CBC News Friday they hope the cancellation of elective, non-urgent surgeries will free up hospital capacity and resources. 

Saad said they reached ICU capacity in the last few days and even had to dip into a provincial stockpile of ventilators for patients. 

"The fact that we had to dip into the provincial stockpile for ventilators was a sign that we were stressing the limits of our resources and we needed to do something to control the numbers and obviously we can't control who comes in through our emergency room ... but we can control people who we are bringing in electively." 

These types of non-urgent surgeries include hip and knee replacements, Saad said. 

The move to cancel these surgeries, he said, should free up about 30 beds and they will continue to reassess the situation as warranted.

"If the shutdown is effective on Monday, after a week or two you will start to see a drop hopefully in the number of infections which means a drop in the number of hospitalizations and ICU admissions," he said. "It's not an ideal situation but we're doing our best to continue with surgeries where we won't occupy a hospital bed."

"As with anything in this pandemic, things can change on a dime and although this is what we are talking about today ... we may have to be more restrictive." 

Saad said currently they have a backlog of about 1,500 elective surgeries, dating back to the spring. 

Hospital CEO David Musyj said at a board meeting Thursday that six COVID-19 patients at the hospital have died within three days.

Musyj also said there is a record 28 patients in hospital with COVID-19, nine of which are in the ICU. 

Windsor-Essex reported 104 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday and the active case total rose to 620.