Friday, January 8, 2021

COVID puts stresses on Northern Health in the Northwest, including need for patient transfers to Prince Rupert Regional Hospital

With Mills Memorial Hospital finding increased levels of
COVID patients, Northern Health has started to transfer patients
to Prince Rupert Regional Hospital 

The current extended period of increasing COVID reports for the Terrace and Nass Valley region has begun to deliver some stresses towards service delivery out of Mills Memorial hospital, with a pair of Northwest media services relaying the ongoing issues for Northern Health in the Northwest earlier today.

Black Press had the first look of the day at the story, making note in both the Terrace Standard and Northern View as to how the recent rise in cases has had an impact on hospital capacity and staff member workload in Terrace. 

As well, todays notes outlined how the surge in COVID at the primary Regional COVID hospital in Terrace, has now seen patients being diverted to the North Coast Health facility at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital.


CFTK TV also featured the story as part of their Friday evening news flow, following up on the Northern View story from earlier in the day and observing that there could be more transfers to come should capacity concerns at other centres require it.


The practice of shifting patients from hospital to hospital during particularly challenging times is not a new thing and as Northern Health pointed out in all of their media presentations on the day, it has been part of their COVID contingency planning since the response program was put together last year.




As we noted yesterday, the most recent BC CDC Local Health Authority data shows that Terrace had 29 new cases reported, with 24 new cases recorded in the Nass Valley in the week of December 27 to January 2.

By comparison, Prince Rupert only listed five new cases for that week, that total however was a spike from recent reports of the last month.

For more notes on Health services in the Northwest see our archive pages below:



For the latest in  COVID related items see our Tracking page here.

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