'Not at this time': COVID-19 field hospital not currently on the table for Windsor-Essex

Windsor, Ont. -

With COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations increasing at a rapid rate in Windsor-Essex, local hospital officials are hoping Ontario’s circuit breaker restrictions announced Monday will have an impact on the number of people who wind up in hospital with the virus.

By the province’s estimate, without new restrictions to “blunt” the case load, hundreds of thousands of daily cases could emerge.

“About one per cent of people who get Omicron will end up in hospital,” Premier Doug Ford told reporters at a news conference Monday. “The math isn’t on our side… One per cent of hundreds of thousands is too many new patients for our hospitals to handle.”

Windsor Regional Hospital’s most recent data shows 32 people currently in hospital with COVID-19. That’s the highest tally since May, 2021, but still well below the peak of 74 hospitalizations from Jan. 4, 2021.

Of those currently admitted, 26 are being primarily treated for COVID-19, with four patients in the ICU.

“We can see the increases in hospitalizations, haven’t seen it much in ICU cases at this point, which is fantastic, but that can change,” warns Steve Erwin, the hospital’s director of communications. “Those doing forecasting for the province are telling us to really look at mid-January in the next two weeks to see if there’s a spike in cases. We need to be prepared for that.”

Erwin says the hospital was also directed to once again postpone non-emergent and elective surgeries to free up bed capacity in the system.

“We need bed capacity to make sure we can care for every patient that comes in, particularly emergency cases and those needing critical care, so the more you can free up that bed capacity and make it available, the better we are off as a system in protecting our community,” he says.

Erwin notes staffing shortages continue to be a challenge. As of Monday, 221 people — or five per cent of local hospital staff — are off because of exposures or positive cases.

Hospital officials know how quickly they can set up a field hospital based on past experience but say right now, that’s not on the table.

“Not at this time,” says Erwin. “You always have contingency plans, right now our focus is on our day-to-day operations and make sure we have enough resources to run the programs and services inside our campuses right now.”