Sudbury hospital postpones surgeries in wake of COVID-19 outbreak

Non-urgent and elective surgeries are being postponed in Sudbury due to a COVID-19 outbreak at the hospital.

The outbreak was declared at Health Sciences North over the weekend, after one staff member and one patient tested positive.

More testing and contact tracing has been done since then, and an additional staff member and two patients also tested positive.The outbreak is on two hallways of the hospital's6th floor.

It's the first COVID-19 outbreak HSNhas had to contend with, says Mark Hartman,senior vice president of patient experience.

"I think it's created a significant amount of stress for the staff working on the unit. You know, they've had a high number of COVID patients over the last few weeks anyway and then to move to full isolation for every patient is additional work," he told Morning North CBC host Markus Schwabe.

"They're in hot and uncomfortable personal protective equipment all day and the added stress and worry of the potential for spread for both themselves and their families come into play. We're very fortunate that we've got an incredible team ... they provide great care, they're very resilient, and they continue to provide compassionate care to the patients."

Hartman says the outbreak has disrupted the flow of patients in and out of hospital.

"So it's limited our capacity to manage. And when that happens, we run the risk of really backing things up in the emergency department," he said.

"So as much as we didn't want to, we chose topostpone some non-urgent elective surgeries."

Despite the postponement of some surgeries, all other clinics and procedures at HSNare continuing as normal.

Tap the player to listen to the whole interview.