‘Quite a big deal’: Nearly two months since Bluewater Health discharged last COVID-19 patient
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Despite a recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Sarnia-Lambton, not a single person has checked into hospital because of the disease for nearly two months.
The first patient arrived on March 21 and the most recent one, a resident from hard-hit Vision Nursing Home, was discharged June 15.
“We haven’t had any COVID patients since then, which is quite incredible,” Julia Oosterman, Bluewater Health’s communications chief, said Sunday. “It’s quite a big deal.”
Bluewater Health, with hospitals in Sarnia and Petrolia, on a daily basis lists a handful of “patients currently in hospital with tests pending for COVID-19” on its online report, but they’re usually connected to routine screening for elective procedures and surgeries.
There have been 45 confirmed cases – including a single-day high of 15 reported by Lambton public health on July 31 – since the last patient was discharged, but none have gone to the hospital. There’s no definite reason as to why, but age demographics could be at play, Oosterman said.
From April through June the virus rocked several long-term care homes, including Vision and Landmark Village. But Lambton public health said the recent spike is connected to multiple families throughout the region.
“Now that it’s going through families or going through different people in the population… hypothetically if the people are younger and they don’t already have breathing issues or other chronic concerns that could be why they’re not requiring acute care at this time,” Oosterman said.
But she added it would be “naive” to “think that we’re out of the woods” and the hospitals are preparing for another wave of patients at some point. They’re running at around 80 per cent capacity as per guidelines from the province.
Nine people recovered from COVID-19 this weekend including six more in the latest report from Lambton public health. A total of 286 cases were resolved, according to the report released late Saturday night. Now just 10 of the area’s 321 confirmed cases are still active. Twenty-five people have died, but none since June. About 1.7 per cent of the 18,859 tests have come back positive.
On-site testing at a greenhouse near Forest where two employees previously tested positive for COVID-19 has been completed and all results came back negative. Mobile testing at Roelands Plant Farms wrapped up Tuesday and the company announced Friday in a statement no positive cases were identified.
“It is very likely that the affected employees were never physically at work while infected, but we wanted to make sure that we did not have any internal spread,” co-owner Adrian Roelands said in the statement. “We’ve also been very vigilant about taking precautions over the last months, with extra sanitizing, requirements for masks and distancing, taking temperatures, all of it. But we did want to take this extra step to be sure, and it’s what was recommended to us.”
The company worked closely with Lambton public health throughout the process, it said.
The topic of masks during the ongoing global pandemic continues to be debated throughout the region. Sarnia has mandated masks for indoor public settings through a bylaw and Petrolia may do the same Monday, but it’s only encouraged and not compulsory throughout the rest of Lambton County.
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