After three months of visitor restrictions at Timmins and District Hospital, scheduled in-person visits are starting soon.
TADH president and CEO Blaise MacNeil said visitations start this Sunday, June 28.
He said it will be a phased approach, and explained the new process.
Patients will be able to have up to two, one-hour visits per week. Patients can choose up to two designated visitors over the age of 16 to be scheduled for alternating visits. People must stay in the patient's room and access to the cafeteria, wards and other areas of the hospital is not allowed right now.
There will be screening for visitors, and MacNeil said no one with cold or flu-like symptoms that resemble COVID-19 symptoms will be permitted to visit. People are also asked to bring their own mask.
He said hospital staff is contacting patients to identify the designated visitors.
“To ensure the safety of all patients, visitors, staff and physicians the hospital will be scheduling all one-hour visitations in advance and not permitting walk-in visitations at this time,” he said.
While the visitor restrictions have been hard, MacNeil said they were necessary as the number of cases in the region climbed.
“As we’ve seen this week with the reporting of two additional cases in the Porcupine Health Unit we aren’t out of the woods yet,” he said. “The hospital is closely monitoring COVID-19 and COVID-19 is circulating in some level within the population. Changes to visitation may be made in order to respond to future COVID-19 changes.”
