Hospital restrictions relaxed as local situation improves

On Saturday the CIUSSS de l’estrie – CHUS loosened the restrictions on visitors and caregivers that had been put in place for the Hôteldieu, Granby and Brome-missisquoiperkins hospitals two weeks ago, but maintained them for the Fleurimont site due to ongoing concerns over outbreaks. While access to all the hospitals remains limited, all of the facilities except Fleurimont will now allow one caregiver per 24 hour period draw from a preapproved list of two identified individuals who can rotate responsibility. General visits remain off limits, and other forms of accompaniment remain subject to medical team authorization and medical necessity, but medical students were able to return to work in all four centres as of Sunday.

In the Estrie region the number of new daily cases settled into a groove between 50 and 60 in recent days, with 58 new cases reported on both Friday and Saturday, and 52 on Sunday. The total number of infections to date in the region is now 10,293 with 649 of those currently active.

As of the most recent figures available at the time of this writing, local hospitalization numbers showed a slight improvement over their average in recent weeks, with 66 people occupying beds outside of intensive care (eight of whom are recovered from the virus but still hospitalized) and 11

in intensive care.

The Villa du Roy, Place Primevère, St-philippe and St-jude private seniors’ residences remain on the provinces list of facilities in a critical situation, although only the Jardins Pinecroft residence in Magog reported a new death on Sunday.

The Province of Quebec reported another 1,457 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing the total number of people infected since the start of the pandemic to 253,633, of whom 227,215 are now considered to have recovered. Friday and Saturday each saw increased of over 1,600 new cases, for a weekend total of 4,773.

Sunday’s data also recorded another 41 new deaths, which, coupled with 40 from Saturday and 42 on Friday, brought the overall total of deaths to 9,478 since last March. Among the 41 deaths reported yesterday, 12 had occurred in the previous 24 hours, 26 occurred between January 17 and January 22, two occurred before January 17 and one occurred at an unknown date.

The number of hospitalizations related to the virus across the province saw decreases over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, lowering the cumulative total to 1,327. Among those, the number of people in intensive care increased by three, for a total of 219. As of Sunday morning, the province had conducted a total of 5,646,660 tests over the course of the pandemic, and the number of active cases was 16,935.

The most recent figures on vaccination in the province indicate that 218,775 doses of vaccine have been administered so far, accounting for roughly 2.56 per cent of the population as a whole. The Estrie Region accounts for 9,962 of those doses.