Horizon, Vitalité health authorities will remain under red level after restrictions lift in N.B.

New Brunswick is just three days away from the removal of all provincial public health restrictions, like masks and isolation requirements. However, the province’s health networks will remain in their internal red levels.

That means nothing will change within the hospital system – masks will still be required and no social visitors will be allowed, only designated support persons.

It also allows the health authorities to postpone appointments or surgeries if there’s a need to redeploy healthcare workers elsewhere.

“This is being done for the protection of our patients and our health-care workers, as we continue to make every effort to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission within our facilities,” said Horizon Health CEO John Dornan in a statement.

“It is important to maintain these measures as an additional safeguard for the health-care system, as New Brunswick continues to see significant daily case counts and continues to see hundreds of our health-care staff unable to report to work following a positive test.”

As of Thursday, 528 healthcare workers across Vitalité and Horizon health networks are off the job after coming down with the virus.

Vitalité’s occupancy rate is at 99 per cent across its hospitals, while Horizon’s is at 93 per cent.

“We were down, a couple of weeks back, about 300 health-care providers that were out isolating and now that’s up almost double,” said Paula Doucet, the president of the N.B. Nurses Union.

“Any time that we have people out of the system, those that are left are left to pick up all of that extra work.”

Doucet says there are still about 1,000 nurse vacancies across the province, which add to the strain. However, she says she’s been assured by the health networks that they’re actively recruiting this year’s nursing graduates.

Other healthcare professionals agree the system needs more time.

“The big issue, which I have spoken about many times, is the fact that even one infection in hospital can add a lot of extra work on an understaffed nursing group,” said Dr. Mark MacMillan, the president of the N.B. Medical Society.

“They’re struggling right now, there are not enough nurses in hospital to care for patients which are there, and that’s the biggest struggle for us, trying to ‘quote -- unquote’ get the hospital reopened back to normal levels. It’s going to be very challenging to do.”