Royal Inland Hospital is preparation for any COVID-19 patients that needed to be admitted to the hospital (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

COVID-19

Interior Health outlines preparations at hospitals, including RIH, amid COVID-19 pandemic

Mar 20, 2020 | 4:42 PM

KAMLOOPS — The ripple effects from the COVID-19 pandemic have already been seen at Royal Inland Hospital. Elective surgeries have been cancelled to make room for any patients infected with the novel coronavirus that may need to be admitted to the hospital.

“Our goal is to increase capacity. We need to increase capacity of our hospitals, of our transport systems, of our staff, of our physicians,” said Executive Medical Director with Interior Health Dr. Nick Balfour. “We need to have additional equipment, resources to prepare to treat these people, and we need to maintain our emergency services as well.”

For the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, Interior Health spoke with the media to outline preparations that are taking places across the health authority, including Royal Inland Hospital.

There are 254 beds at RIH, and according to the hospital it was at 115 per cent capacity in 2018-2019. Interior Health says hospitals have been meeting daily and preparing since last Thursday for a potential surge in COVID-19 patients.

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“We are doing simulations at our sites when [patients] arrive, so they can be managed safely and appropriately,” noted Dr. Balfour. “There are going to be different levels of responsiveness we have something called a pandemic plan, and dependent on the volume of patients we have to manage, we’ll have different contingencies.”

Interior Health is encouraging people to use the province’s self-assessment tool online, and if their symptoms are a match, they should phone 811.

“Urgent and primary care centres are testing individuals,” said Medical Health Officer Dr. Silvina Mema. “We are using those centres to test people in the community who don’t need to be in the emergency department. We don’t want to have a lot of individuals going to the emergency department because they’re going to have to wait long hours and we don’t want to congregate people.”

B.C.’s medical health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced 19 cases within Interior Health as of Friday. The health authority predicts the number of cases will only rise as more information emerges, but Interior Health hasn’t yet noticed any community transmission.

“From the information that we have, we are not really seeing community transmission. We are not convinced there is community transmission,” noted Dr. Mema. “But again, I don’t want to reassure people that that is not happening because we may not be seeing cases that may be out there.”