Surgery cancellations might end up becoming a regular occurrence at Dunedin Hospital this winter, the Southern District Health Board has warned.
All non-urgent operations were cancelled on Wednesday, as were many procedures yesterday, but board chief operating officer Hamish Brown was hopeful the hospital would be back to normal today.
"The system is under a whole lot of sustained pressure — some of it related to Covid, some of it is related to general levels of illness in the community, some of it is a high level of acute occupancy, and that is all contributing to overall demand," Mr Brown said.
"My gut feeling is that we will be here again over winter."
On Wednesday, the hospital was at capacity, but it also did not have enough staff to look after those patients,
Mr Brown said.
Other hospitals around New Zealand had experienced similar issues as at Dunedin: Christchurch Hospital has also had to limit surgery and yesterday Middlemore in Auckland was also at capacity.
"Our staff are working so hard to cover gaps and to make sure care is safe. They are the real heroes in this," Mr Brown said.
The SDHB has attempted to maintain some level of elective surgery despite the added demands of catering for patients with Covid-19, to try to avoid a major backlog of cases which developed after the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Mr Brown said the board was still able to do acute surgeries but the current crisis would affect its ability to deliver planned care during winter.
"We are still doing emergency and acute surgery and at all times yesterday we did have three theatres running."
Southern hospitals are continuing to care for a high number of patients with Covid-19: there were 29 such cases yesterday.
There were 594 new community cases reported in Otago and Southland.
The Ministry of Health reported 27 new deaths of people who had Covid-19: 22 were in the past five days, and five have died since March 29.
Of the 27, two were from the southern region.
