CRH grapples with social-distancing protocol

WESTERN BUREAU:

It would appear that the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) is struggling to rigidly enforce strict compliance with the COVID-19 social-distancing protocols and mass-gathering ban.

The MoBay hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department was observed yesterday flouting the prescribed 20-person limit for those gathered under a tented area as a doctor and a security officer saw to their needs. Others, meanwhile, sat on benches under a tree waiting to be treated.

That limit will fall to 10 effective March 25.

Despite the breaches observed by The Gleaner, Dr Diane Campbell-Stennett, regional technical director at the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA), is insisting that the hospital is complying with the guidelines that have been given to contain the spread of COVID-19. One death and 21 infections have been recorded locally.

“We are practising social distancing, so patients are not there seated together. They are supposed to be skipping chairs (having an empty seat in-between patients) and so forth. It was probably about 20 of them there, from what I saw,” said Campbell-Stennett. “Even so, we have to have the patients there, so we’re going to ‘social-distance’ them. But we can’t tell the sick people that they can’t come.”

At the time, at least 25 people were gathered.

Besides the numbers, it was also noticed that many of the waiting patients were sitting close to one another in breach of the Ministry of Health & Wellness recommendations that individuals keep a distance of at least one metre apart.

To date, there have been approximately 350,000 infections and 15,000 deaths related to COVID-19 globally.