Newsroom

COVID-19 Outbreak Declared For 7th Floor At WRH Ouellette Campus

29-11-2020

Last.Friday,.November.27,.2020, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit announced it was investigating with the hospitals a potential "cluster of cases" at Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH), Ouellette Campus and Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, Tayfour Campus.

We are now able to confirm that ALL patients swabbed on the 7th floor (East and West) on Friday, November 27, 2020, were ALL negative for COVID-19. Four (4) staff who worked on the 7th floor are positive for COVID-19. Many other staff have received their results back already and tested negative as well.

The 7th floor (East and West) is a medical or non-surgical floor consisting of 60 beds, accounting for more than 10% of WRH's bed capacity.

Even though COVID-19 has NOT been shown at this time to have spread from WRH staff to patients, or between patients, or between patients and staff, an outbreak is being declared by the Windsor-Essex Public Health Unit.

On Friday, as precautionary measures, immediate steps to contain COVID-19 spread were put in place as though an outbreak had already been declared.

As a result, we will continue the following measures until the Medical Officer of Health for Windsor-Essex County Health Unit rescinds the Outbreak order:

• ANY admissions to the 7th floor (East and West) will cease immediately and patients will not be transferred out unless discharged home or for medical necessity (for example, if a patient requires a move to a critical care unit should their medical condition worsen).
• Testing for COVID-19 on all patients will be completed once again on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.
• All staff working on 7th floor (East and West) will be swabbed weekly starting Wednesday, December 2, 2020, until further notice.
• Equipment must be dedicated to 7th floor (East and West) or cleaned and disinfected after use. All staff will wear masks and eye protection for all patient contact.
• All visitation and student placements on 7th floor (East and West) will continue to be suspended as well as any services from our community providers.
• Enhanced environmental scans will continue to be conducted on 7th floor (East and West).

"The declaration of an outbreak on the 7th floor of the Ouellette campus will create patient flow issues and will start to impact scheduled/elective surgeries the longer the outbreak remains in place," stated Dr. Wassim Saad, Chief of Staff, WRH. "Although the 7th floor is a medical floor in order to admit medical patients from the Emergency Department, we will need to start to create internal capacity at both the Met and Ouellette campuses. The age and configuration of the 7th floor at Ouellette does not allow us to continue to admit patients to the 7th floor during an outbreak even though there has been no spread to patients at this time."

"I want to thank our healthcare partners in the region for supporting us during this declaration of an outbreak," stated David Musyj, President and CEO, WRH.