Elective surgeries stopped at Truro hospital because of COVID pressures

Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health warned Tuesday that the province's health-care system has little room for expanding its capacity and said elective surgeries have already stopped at the Truro hospital.

"We have little ability to absorb a surge of severe illness from COVID," Dr. Robert Strang said at Tuesday's COVID-19 briefing.

Strang said despite having one of the most vaccinated populations in the world, Nova Scotia remains vulnerable because of the roughly 10 per cent of the population that hasn't been vaccinated.

Strang said the spread of COVID-19 among unvaccinated people will put pressure on an already strained health-care system.

He saidtheColchester East Hants Health Centrein Truro has stopped doing elective surgeries because of"pressures from what's happening in that part of the province."

Nova Scotia Health spokespersonCarla Adams said45 surgeries scheduled to take place at Colchester East Hants Health Centre between Tuesday and Friday have been postponed.

Adams saidthe hospitalis still providing urgent and emergent inpatient surgery, as well as some elective day surgerythis week.

"While the surgery reductions are not necessarily directly related to the COVID situation, fewer surgeries reduce the pressure on bed access and patient flow," she said in an email.

"Surgeries were reduced at northern zone's three regional hospitals for different reasons this summer, mostly to do with staffing challenges and mostly at Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre."

Outbreak in northern zone community

The Truro hospital is located in the northern health zone, which is currently seeing an outbreak in what's been called a "defined group."

Most of the group is unvaccinated, so more cases are expected,a government news release said Tuesday.

Sixty-one of Tuesday's 66 new cases in Nova Scotia are in the northern zone, and 59 of those are close contacts of previously reported cases.

At Tuesday's briefing, Strangdeclined to provide further details about the community experiencing the outbreak so asto avoid stigmatization. He said there is a young demographicand the people of the community mostly interactwith each other.

Strangurged Nova Scotiansto get vaccinated.

"Broad spread will create further pressures and could prevent people from accessing critically urgent non-COVID health-care services," he said."That is happening in other parts of the country."

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