As expected, COVID-19 dominated the conversation at Windsor Regional Hospital's Annual General Meeting (AGM).
Hospital President and CEO David Musyj led Thursday night's meeting with some sobering stats, but showed there's light at the end of the tunnel in the form of vaccines.
Musyj says 1,121 people have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19 in Windsor since March of 2020 with 235 of those patients succumbing to the virus.
While there has been rare occurrences worldwide, Musyj says no one has been admitted to hospital in Windsor after being vaccinated against COVID-19.
He says staff members have dealt with potential exposure for more than a year and vaccinations have made a huge difference.
"Prior to vaccinations we had approximately 200 of our 5,000 plus staff test positive for COVID-19, since double dosing, we've had a total of five," Musyj added.
Five cases out of 5,000 staff members is a huge improvement, according to Musyj.
"That's even when COVID-19 rates in the community were high. All of those cases had no or mild symptoms," he added.
Over the past year and a half, Musyj admits the hospital has been pushed to its limit but did acknowledged $9.8-million announced in the 2021 Provincial Budget that would push a $2-billlion regional acute care centre into the second phase of the planning process.
"There's no amount of renovations to existing buildings that can be done adequately to protect our population moving forward," he says. "We should not be providing healthcare in Ontario using tarps and duct tape."