5 facts about Newmarket hospital's new coronavirus testing tent

Southlake Regional Health Centre's medical tent opened for COVID-19 patients April 30

Yorkregion.com
May 5, 2020
Lisa Queen

At noon on April 30, Southlake Regional Health Centre began using its new field hospital tent to assess patients with coronavirus symptoms.

Two tents sit in the parking lot between the hospital’s east entrance and Southlake Village long-term care home.

Only one tent, with six assessment spots for ambulatory patients, is being used now, although the second can be up and running if additional capacity is needed.

The tent is replacing the drive-through assessment area in the ambulance bay attached to the emergency department.

The tents can, if needed, be turned into negative-pressure environments to prevent cross-contamination of highly infectious diseases.

As of April 30, 58 patients have been hospitalized at Southlake for COVID-19. There are currently five patients in the intensive care unit with coronavirus and 17 patients in other units of the hospital with the virus. The hospital has seen 3,000 patients in its COVID-19 assessment area and 223 have tested positive.

Stephen Trafford, manager of emergency and disaster preparedness, and emergency department chief, Dr. Gaurav Puri, gave media tours of the tent just before it began accepting patients.

Here are five things they want you to know about the tent:

Said Puri: “Right now, our goal with these tents, it’s meant to be our new assessment centre instead of having patients go through the EMS bay. We’re doing that because we’re anticipating that our volumes may increase and we don’t want the fact that we’re using half the ambulance bay to be an impediment to ambulances coming into emerg because we still have to look after those patients. At the same time, we want to be able to safely assess patients who may have symptoms suggestive of COVID or patients who have had an exposure and need to be tested. So, the tent gives a little more real estate and in an area where patients don’t have to drive through.

“Every day is different. For example, yesterday we tested about 125 patients. Every day changes. Some days, it’s 60, some days it’s 80 or 90. Volumes in emerg are, unfortunately, unscheduled visits.

“If you could ignore that this is a tent, this is extra space for us to see our patients in the emergency department. Space is a luxury for us so when we get extra space, we’re happy to take it and use it to look after our patients. When patients aren’t as crowded, there is less of an infection risk. It’s a more pleasant experience for the patient. I don’t even think of this as a tent. This is an assessment area. There’s air conditioning and heating in here and bathrooms. We don’t have that in our garage so this actually is quite nice.”

Said Trafford: “We can quickly turn this into negative pressure if we have to. We don’t need a negative pressure environment for this evaluation, this testing process. But if we wanted to or needed to move patients in here that we wanted to have in a negative pressure environment, we could quickly do that by simply closing some of the doors and isolating the environment and negative pressure would kick in.

“From a reassurance perspective, it is also nice to know the hospital is prepared for these types of emergencies and these shelters actually provide Southlake with a very robust, flexible option for major disasters (in the future), not just the COVID-19 event we’re dealing with.”