There are now seven confirmed COVID-19 patients hospitalized at Bluewater Health.
Communications Chief Julia Oosterman told Blackburn News Sarnia Thursday afternoon that there are two new confirmed cases. However, she wasn't immediately able to provide specific details about the individuals including their age range.
"The individuals are all requiring acute level care," said Oosterman. "Which means they're having difficulty breathing and all require hospital [treatment]."
Oosterman said they have been taking steps to free up capacity in the event of a surge of patients.
"So we needed to be very, very conscious of the fact that we need to have only the individuals in hospital who need to be here. So we had amazing collaboration and partnership with our home and community care partners, long-term care homes, retirement homes, families. We've really called on all of our partners, and pulled out all the stops at really trying to discharge patients if at all possible."
The hospital is at 65 per cent capacity which Oosterman said is quite significant.
"Normally the hospital runs at 100 or over 100 per cent capacity, we have pretty much every bed filled in the hospital all the time. So right now what this means is we actually have some space in the hospital to care for the anticipated influx of COVID patients," she said.
Oosterman said there is a new link on the Bluewater Health website that shows a running total of not only the patients that are in hospital related to COVID-19, but also the number of individuals who are in ICU.
-With files from Colin Gowdy