Content article
Twenty-three staff at the Brant Community Healthcare System face termination for being unvaccinated for COVID-19.
Content article
Early in November, the BCHS, which operates Brantford General Hospital and the Willett urgent-care center in Paris, announced a mandatory COVID vaccination policy for its more than 1,700 employees and medical staff with a Jan. 4 deadline.
David McNeil, BCHS’s president and CEO, said Tuesday that 12 full-time and 11 part-time staff are now in a cooling down period for the next two weeks.
“They can’t report to work. They’re off work at this stage, but we’re still giving them the two-week opportunity to reconsider whether or not they want to become vaccinated. ”
McNeil said the hospital would work with staff that opt to have their first dose of vaccination, requiring them to be regularly tested via rapid testing until fully vaccinated.
“Our policy in the organization is you need to be vaccinated to work, given the fact we are dealing with high-risk situations,” McNeil stated. “We have an obligation to protect employees as well.
“So there’s a two-pronged approach to this. If they choose not to be vaccinated, they can no longer be an employee of the BCHS.
He said 58 staff members are currently off work who are self-isolating.
“We anticipate that number will continue to grow,” he said. “Staffing challenges have been very significant because of the Omicron variant.”
While isolation guidelines have changed and become shortened, McNeil said the hospital must manage isolation requirement base on the symptoms of staff.
He said the Christmas period presented significant challenges for staff, with front-line health-care providers carrying heavier than average patient loads because of absenteeism.
Content article
McNeil said scheduled care in surgical suites and ambulatory care – that is reduced over the Christmas period annually – would typically have reopened Tuesday. But that didn’t happen because of the province announced pandemic restrictions this week, including canceling non-urgent surgeries.
The Ministry of Health directive is in place for three weeks, but McNeil said BGH is meeting urgent and emergent surgical care needs of all patients, accounting for about 35 per cent of normal capacity.
As of 4:30 pm Tuesday, 20 people are hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19, including five patients in ICU.
“All of those patients were admitted for the treatment of their COVID disease,” McNeil said. “We don’t have any declared outbreaks, so nobody is becoming infected within the hospital.”
He said that, given the hospital’s “very old infrastructure and lack of private capacity,” preventing outbreaks is always a challenge.
“We have room to manage 15 patients, our normal (critical care) capacity, and we have the surge capacity of five beds,” said McNeil, adding that a regional capacity committee among all area hospitals manages critical care together, moving p patients around as required.
“At this stage, this variant has not put the pressure on our critical care system that we had in Wave 3,” he noted. “Fortunately, the length of stay of these patients is fairly short. They need some quick stabilization and oxygenation, and then they’re quickly discharged. ”
McNeil said Omicron is presenting as mild, but it’s unclear when the peak will hit.
“This is an unforgiving disease and there is only a certain amount of capacity. The focus right now has to be to triage our work force so we can meet the needs of emergent care patients, which are people coming in with the virus that need support, and people with surgical care needs that are emergent and urgent.
“We are early on in this disease and we have a ways to go yet.”