39 more COVID cases reported in South zone

By Gillian Slade on March 26, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDEGslade@abnewsgroup.com

Alberta Health Services (AHS) says there were 39 COVID-19 positive patients in hospitals in the South zone on Thursday morning.
Of that number 32 were in Chinook Regional Hospital Lethbridge with seven of those in the ICU.
Medicine Hat Regional Hospital (MHRH) had five COVID-19 positive patients and two of those were in the ICU.
Cardston Health Centre had two COVID-19 patients.
Not all the COVID patients in MHRH are local.
Dr. Aaron Low, AHS South zone medical director, says both of the patients in MHRH’s ICU were redirected from the west side of the South zone.
“There are two (COVID) patients in Medicine Hat ICU … both were redirected from the west side of the zone to Medicine Hat,” said Low.
He says this is something that takes place even unrelated to COVID. People are sometimes moved from rural to regional centres based on availability.
“We look at our bed capacity from a zone perspective. We sometimes call this load leveling,” said Low.
Chinook hospital has capacity for 14 patients in its ICU and on Thursday seven beds had COVID patients and two were non-COVID patients, said Low.

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