Well being P.E.I. confirmed Friday that there have been instances when COVID-positive sufferers or these with signs couldn’t be separated from others in emergency room ready areas attributable to a scarcity of area.
There was an uptick in circumstances of COVID-19 on P.E.I. this summer time, in addition to crowded ER rooms attributable to a scarcity of each household medical doctors and health-care staff.
Tara Ferguson, provincial supervisor of an infection prevention and management for Well being P.E.I., says as soon as they’re screened and admitted, sufferers with COVID-19 are separated from sufferers who do not need the virus, though they might be in the identical unit.
“We do the identical factor within the emergency room,” she stated. “It is simply we might not at all times have two bodily[ly] totally different rooms.
“Nevertheless, we might have the respiratory on one aspect and the non-respiratory on the opposite. So primarily we’re doing the identical factor. We simply haven’t got the bodily partitions to indicate the barrier between them.”
As properly, she stated, folks ready for care are inspired to put on a masks. In some circumstances, Ferguson stated dividers are positioned between sufferers, or chairs are positioned away from one another to permit for folks to be bodily distanced.
And whereas COVID-19 spreads via airborne droplets, Well being P.E.I. stated its an infection management protocol appears to be working.
“We have not linked any transmission to one in all our ERs,” stated Ferguson. “Most individuals are … coming in with it or [we are] discovering it on our admission screening, however we have not linked something again to our ER ready rooms.”
She stated for the reason that elimination of specialised COVID-19 models, optimistic circumstances are grouped and handled collectively on models.
Ferguson famous that it is nearly unavoidable that some sufferers will contract COVID-19 whereas in hospital.
“We’re in well being care; we do have that threat. Nevertheless, I believe we have executed a very good job with our screening protocols, our testing protocols to stop that from taking place,” she stated.
“So we do display screen each affected person day by day for COVID signs. We check once they turn out to be symptomatic. We put them on isolation the second they turn out to be symptomatic.”
Ferguson stated Well being P.E.I. has been updating its an infection management protocol because it was introduced in over two years in the past. She stated selections are made based mostly on lowering threat whereas attempting to take care of a health-care system that works for Islanders.
