Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be paying a virtual visit to London Health Care workers Thursday afternoon.
Trudeau will join local MPs Kate Young and Peter Fragiskatos for a virtual roundtable on COVID-19 with health care workers from the London Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph’s Health Care.
Fragiskatos tells Global News that around a dozen health care works from various disciplines on the frontlines of the pandemic will participate in the routable.
He said the purpose of the roundtable is to congratulate health care workers for their contribution and give them feedback on the government’s handling of the pandemic.
In the last seven days, at least 134 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the Middlesex-London region.
“We saw what happened in the spring when we had hospitals overwhelmed. We do see a steady increase in the number of hospitalizations, and the more it increases, the more it threatens to overwhelm our health care system once again,” Fragiskatos said.
“This is a virus that spreads unlike anything we have seen before in our lifetime. … I am quite concerned we could see an increase in hospitalizations.”
The roundtable is scheduled to get underway at 2 p.m. Thursday.
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The discussion comes amid two outbreaks that were declared at University Hospital just days apart — the first on Tuesday on the fourth floor in General Medicine and the second Wednesday on the ninth floor in Orthopaedics.
The total number of infected patients is unknown, but an internal memo suggests at least three patients have tested positive for the virus in the outbreak on the fourth floor.
The roundtable also comes after an Ipsos poll on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) suggests most Canadians think the Canadian Health Care system needs a major boost.
A survey of 1,150 Canadians found that 88 per cent said there need to be more beds, personal protective equipment (PPE), medical staff, hospitals and clinics, to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 93 per cent of those aged 55 and above agreed.
Researchers say COVID-19 has exposed long-standing deficiencies in the health care system, and Canadians want to see the government make significant improvements.
— With files from Natalie Lovie and Saba Aziz Global News
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