Sudbury’s Health Sciences North has started to publish its numbers of past positive COVID-19 patients to show the long term impact of the virus.
A past positive patient is someone who was admitted to the hospital and tested positive for COVID-19, but later tests negative during their stay in hospital.
Mark Hartman, the hospital’s senior vice-president of patient experience and digital transformation, said it can take 10 to 20 days from the onset for COVID-19 symptoms for someone to no longer be infectious.
But Hartman said even if a patient is no longer infectious, they can still present significant symptoms that require hospital care.
As of Dec. 21 the hospital reported it had 11 confirmed COVID-19 patients admitted, of which two were in the intensive care unit, and 14 past positive patients.
On that date, two of Health Sciences North’s past positive patients were also admitted into the intensive care unit.
“It shows that there’s nearly as many or sometimes more patients that are past positive that remain in hospital as there are active cases,” Hartman said.
“And so we really feel it’s important that we’re transparent about that information and that people understand the total demand on the system.”
That demand on the system has a long-term impact on the hospital’s acute care services, Hartman said.
“We hope that this information helps convince people that the important things that we’ve been hearing from public health they act on,” he added.
“So getting vaccinated and keeping gatherings small, particularly over the Christmas holidays, avoiding non-essential travel, wearing masks.”
Hartman said Health Sciences North expects the Omicron variant could have an impact on the hospital because it is more contagious than past variants.
“Our active cases are still much higher than we would like them to be, but are relatively steady from the last couple of weeks,” he said. “So I don’t think it’ll be too long before we start to see that impact on the hospital.”
Morning North5:51Health Sciences North is now sharing its numbers of past positive COVID-19 patients
Sudbury’s Health Sciences North is sharing its numbers of past positive COVID-19 patients. Why? We spoke with Mark Hartman is the hospital’s senior vice-president of patient experience and digital transformation to find out. 5:51
