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Osler is on the road to recovery. After 17 challenging months, Osler has reached a pivotal point in our COVID-19 journey and we are now shifting gears towards the resumption of services and programs paused by the pandemic.
I know that having these services on hold has been difficult and that some people have been waiting a long time for care while we focused on our COVID-19 response. Every decision we made was done to help keep our community and patients and families, staff, physicians and volunteers safe.
With vaccination rates increasing and COVID-19 cases decreasing in our communities, resuming Osler’s programs and services is a priority and we are working hard to make it happen. But it will take time. It’s no secret that the communities Osler serves – and, in turn, our hospitals – were hit harder and longer by COVID-19.
At the height of the third wave, Osler had more COVID-19 patients than any other hospital in Ontario. To date, 3,886 patients have been admitted to our hospitals with COVID-19, 848 of whom received care in our Intensive Care Units. Over the course of the pandemic, we also transferred 1,125 patients to other hospitals – the most of any organization in the province – to help create capacity and ensure everyone had access to the care they needed.
The reality is Osler’s path out of the pandemic is likely to have some twists and turns that hospitals outside of COVID-19 hotspots may not experience. But none that Osler can’t – and won’t – continue to navigate together with our many health system and community partners. I’m proud to say that the pandemic has only served to strengthen these relationships and further unite us in our collective commitment to building healthier communities with access to safe, seamless, high-quality and compassionate care for all.
In the coming weeks and months, Osler will continue to resume elective, non-emergent and non-urgent surgeries and procedures, subject to COVID-19 activity in our communities and in our hospitals.
To enable our staff and physicians to support Osler’s recovery efforts, our COVID-19 testing centres and COVID-19 vaccine clinics will be closing in the coming weeks. Osler was the site of one of the first COVID-19 testing centres and COVID-19 vaccine clinics in the province and I am so grateful to everyone who stepped forward to provide these services – they are a big part of the reason we are now seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and are in a position to gradually and safely return to some of our ‘normal’ operations. Our ability as a hospital to pivot away from COVID-19 testing and vaccinations represents a major milestone both for the community and for Osler, and is something we can all be proud of.
Since the start of the pandemic, Osler has administered over 430,000 COVID-19 tests and provided 240,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine – a truly herculean effort by our team with the unwavering support of numerous dedicated partners. We will continue to work with Ontario Health, Peel and Toronto Public Health, our Brampton Etobicoke Ontario Health Team and various community partners to transition both vaccine administration and testing services to ensure they remain accessible and available to the communities we serve. Learn more about the transition of these services from Osler to the community.
Another silver lining of the pandemic is that it forced us to think differently – to be creative in how and where we care for our patients. As such, there are initiatives and innovations that came from COVID-19 – including virtual care options – that have made us stronger and will continue moving forward.
I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished and how far we’ve come together as a community and ask for everyone’s continued resilience, support and patience as we work to carefully reopen our doors and continue our road to recovery. You can check out Osler’s 2020-21 Annual Report to learn more about how, in a year like no other, we came together to care for our patients, community and one another with courage and compassion.
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