The CEO of Windsor Regional Hospital is expressing skepticism over a proposal for COVID-free hospitals.
David Musyj told AM800's The Morning Drive that it could be very difficult and complicated to set-up COVID-free hospitals, pointing to the testing that needs to take place before a patient is identified as having the virus.
Health Minister Christine Elliott announced Monday that the provincial government is looking at possibly making some hospitals COVID-free so that cancelled and postponed elective surgeries can resume.
Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj believes that a lot of details would need to be worked out to make it happen.
"I don't know how you create a COVID-free hospital unless every single patient that comes in with symptoms to the emergency department, even before you get the results back, unless we start with immediate results but it doesn't look like we're going to get that, would then be sent off to another hospital," he says.
Musyj is also worried how you would manage patients coming to the hospital believing they have COVID-19.
"A patient showing up in Chatham, Erie Shores or Windsor Regional Hospital with COVID like symptoms, do you immediately transfer them out to the COVID only hospital? They'll be bombarded. Do you wait until they test positive and then transfer them? Well then you're ot COVID-free because they're in your hospital."
Musyj says Windsor Regional Hospital has around 1,500 elective or non-urgent surgeries that have been postponed or cancelled.
"Just recently, unfortunately, Toronto Western Hospital had a big outbreak among their staff and patients in their facility of COVID. You have to go slow. We can not undue all the good work that we've done and we can undue it really fast."
Windsor Regional Hospital cancelled all non-urgent and elective surgeries on March 19 as part of measures to control the spread of COVID-19.