Ottawa Hospital building 40-bed temporary unit in Civic Campus parking lot

The Ottawa Hospital is building a temporary site in a parking lot to create more capacity for the emergency department at its Civic Campus amid high occupancy rates during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The local hospital said Monday it is working with Ontario’s Ministry of Health to create an ambulance offload and medicine transition unit in the east parking lot of its Carling Avenue campus.

The hospital said construction has already started on the 40-bed temporary unit, with hopes work will be completed by the end of the year.

The new site is intended to help increase hospital capacity and patient flow, reducing ER wait times and helping paramedics get back into the field more quickly.

Ottawa Public Health’s COVID-19 dashboard shows 97 per cent of acute care beds were occupied across the city’s health-care system as of Sunday. There are 43 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in Ottawa, according to the dashboard.

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The hospital said it is working to redistribute parking spots taken up by the construction work.

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