Thunder Bay hospital drops most pandemic restrictions, pivots to 'new normal'

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre hospital is pivoting to a new normal, dropping most of its strictest COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

Officials at the hospital say that as of April 1,they are transitioning out of its COVID-19 emergency pandemic response and into what they're calling a "new normal."

The move comes with the stabilization of key health care indicators and in alignment with provincial guidance. The hospital is dropping active COVID-19 screening booths and moving in passive screening which means patients who have symptoms or know they've been exposed to COVID-19 will have to take responsibility for not visiting themselves.

Mandatory masking, however, will remain unchanged.

Jennifer Wintermans is vice president of Quality and Corporate Affairs and the COVID-19 lead at the TBRHSC.

She said they have been following the guidance of localpublic health officials and the Ministry of Health and applying protective measures based on that guidance.

"We have done away with changing response levels and we've taken the main components that we've used throughout the last couple of years that seem to be the pieces that are always fluctuating within our response levels, and we've actually applied them and integrated them into our normal operations," said Wintermans.

She said these changes have been occurring for some time now and they've been surveilling to make sure it was the right time to implement changes.

"There was a lot of evaluation done based on what other hospitals are doing as well as consultation with a lot of our internal teams to see how we can continue to keep our environments at a safe level, but move forward with transitioning over as most of the other health sector has done," said Wintermans.

She said they're looking at phase 2 and will be doing assessments and evaluating those components over the next couple of weeks.