Northern Health (NH) has had no new Covid cases for a month, as of July 9.
The health service provider that covers the area from Quesnel to Prince Rupert, informed the public through their Facebook page, that there had been a total of 65 Covid cases with 100 per cent recovery rate to date.
Eryn Collins, the spokesperson for NH told Lakes District News that currently no patients with Covid are hospitalized and there have been zero deaths so far in the region. The total number of tests conducted at the time of going to press were 8,531.
With restrictions being lifted, travel opening up and the record of no new cases with NH, the care provider decided to open up the laboratory services with minimal restrictions. NH announced through a Facebook post that starting July 6, NH Laboratory services were returning to a new normal and several restrictions on lab services were going to be lifted.
Some of the changes that patients would see as a result of this are — patients can now get blood tests done with orders from physician as labs are now ready for routine blood collection, patients with requisition for lab services should contact their local lab to make an appointment or drop in for service and updated lab hours and appointment information would be available on Northern Health website.
NH will also be dividing or grouping its patients into cohorts based on the type of lab service they would need.
The ‘cohorts’ are grouped as patients requiring lab tests or services for chemotherapy, Chronic Renal Disease, transplant patients will have to come between 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., for those requiring fasting lab work, Glucose Tolerance Test (GTT) will have to come between 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and those requiring Electrocardiogram (ECGs) and the remaining patients will have to come between 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
No prior appointments would be needed to come in for those cohorts. However, patients would be contacted for setting up an appointment in case of some procedures that require a separate lab requisition, such as Holter Monitors.
In case of any additional questions, NH is encouraging people to contact Lakes District Hospital and Health Centre Laboratory directly.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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