STATEMENT
For Immediate Release:
March 28, 2020
London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) is reporting its first death in connection to COVID-19. Our collective thoughts are with the patient’s family at this difficult time.
The patient was a male in his 70s with a recent travel history to Portugal. As expected the care team followed appropriate infection control protocols and practices throughout the patient’s treatment, including appropriate patient isolation and personal protective equipment (PPE).
LHSC continues to work diligently to provide care for COVID-19 patients and has put significant measures in place to protect patients, staff and physicians, including:
- Ramping down all non-essential activity including elective surgeries and other non-emergent clinical activity, to help build capacity;
- Stopping all visitors, with very limited exceptions for those deemed essential;
- Limiting the number of, and creating separate, entrances for staff, patients and visitors and enhanced active screening;
- Opening two COVID-19 Assessment Centres in partnership with Middlesex-London Health Unit and St. Joseph’s Health Care London.
As the number of cases across London and the country continue to grow, it is more extremely important that we continue follow the public health agencies’ latest advice, including social distancing, self-monitoring for symptoms, and self-isolation after out-of-country travel or contact with a known or probable case of COVID-19.
