(September 4, 2020)<\/p>\n
By: Jackie Sharkey, Yahoo News<\/p>\n
So far, 13 Windsor Regional Hospital staff have caught COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic, but it was from community exposure \u2014 not inside the hospital, says administration.<\/p>\n
The staff infection rate was released Thursday night at the hospital’s monthly board meeting.<\/p>\n
It’s an update from numbers in May, when\u00a0CEO David Musyj said four staff and one physician had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n
“A staff overall of 5,000 to 5,500 and \u2014 knock on wood \u2014 only 13 of them have tested positive,” Musyj told the board, including nurses, physicians and housekeeping staff.<\/p>\n
Most of the cases came in the early months of the pandemic, with one or two in the months of July or August.<\/p>\n
Musyj said highly-detailed contact tracing, conducted by the hospital, has them “99 per cent positive” staff were infected in the community, and there had no cases spread between staff or from staff to patients.<\/p>\n
“And that’s because our staff are protecting themselves, they’re protecting each other and they’re protecting the patients,” said Musyj.<\/p>\n
By comparison, according to numbers complied by the Ontario Health Coalition as of May 5, 39 staff at London Health Sciences Centre’s University Hospital had come down with COVID-19.<\/p>\n
Toronto Western Hospital, meanwhile, had four outbreaks within the hospital, which infected 79 staff and 19 patients.\u00a0Trillium Health Partners’ Mississauga Hospital had 3 outbreaks with 85 infected staff and 10 patients.<\/p>\n