The chief of staff at Bluewater Health says the hospital is “very close” to operating its surgery and diagnostic services at 100 per cent capacity.

Hospitals across the province cancelled elective surgeries and diagnostic tests in mid-March as they geared up for a possible influx of COVID-19 patients.

And while Bluewater Health had 57 patients during the early months of the pandemic, there have been no COVID-19 patients in hospital for a month, Dr. Michael Haddad said during a news conference Tuesday.

Haddad says officially, the hospital has ramped up surgery to 80 per cent of normal, however he believes it is close to 100 per cent now.

“Having said this, we do have a big backlog created over the past four months that we have to catch up on,” he says.

“So even being at 100 per cent, which is supposed to be next week, we still have to work quite hard to catch up on the backlog.”

That backlog may take longer to clear up than officials hope because Haddad says people are still concerned to come to the hospital which once held COVID-19 patients.

“We can’t predict what’s going to happen in the fall or the winter.

“So if people are booked to have their procedures done, they need to actually take advantage of it before we potentially can have a second wave,” he says