When Covid protocols tightened last December, la Pêche Media contacted the Wakefield hospital in an effort to speak directly to medical professionals about how the pandemic was affecting them. We were referred to the local health authority who informed us that only approved spokespersons of the CISSS had the authorization to give interviews.

An interview was booked with the sole approved bilingual spokesperson on the team, Dr. Brigitte Pinard but subsequently postponed twice and then cancelled altogether when is was explained that in order to meet media demand, questions would be addressed via press conferences.

in a broad-ranging media call, Dre Brigitte Pinard was joined by Marie-Eve Cloutier and France Dumont, who addressed in tern a board range of issues from school attendance to surgical waiting lists.

"People who present  symptoms compatible with Covid 19 must consider themselves as cases," affirmed Pinard. "If we have access to a rapid test, of course we use it. Otherwise, we consider  that we are a case, and we isolate ourselves."

Marie-Eve Cloutier shared the news that the region will be among the first in Quebec to offer day surgeries for hips and knees, in an effort to accelerate operations and free up beds.

"We are working really hard  with all the teams to keep increasing accessibility and to ensure that we are able to adequately prioritize and to balance the need for beds with our ability to meet demand," she said.

"Appointment cancellations in the Outaouais are minimal," affirmed France Dumont. "In terms of surgical operations, currently, we don't have any cancelled surgeries. We can even say, if we take stock of the difficult situation we had in August with 10,500 patients on the waiting list, that we succeeded in reducing it to 8800 currently on the waiting list.

"Obviously, we are far from our objectives. The number is still much higher  than what we had before the pandemic, but the fact remains that, thanks to the combination of service offers in the region, with the CMS, which gave us  a helping hand, and with the effort of staff to maintain the  surgical component everywhere across the region, we still managed to shorten that waiting list," she declared.

Gillian Kirkland, journalist