It's not as if there are no surgeries taking place, it's just that some surgeries which require larger instruments are not taking place. As a matter of fact, since July, 200 surgeries have been completed, and of the 124 surgeries that were cancelled at the end of July, about 23 of those have been completed. There is a need, of course, to address this big backlog. Some of the things we're looking at is whether it would be possible for people to go to the Inuvik Regional Hospital and have surgery performed there. We had been considering sending patients to Alberta, but unfortunately, that is no longer an option because surgeries for Albertans are also being cancelled for a variety of reasons, including a surge of COVID cases.

The department has looked at the possibility of having the surgical instruments reprocessed somewhere else. They actually are going to perform an experiment in the coming week by sending surgical equipment to the Foothills Hospital in Calgary to see whether the sterilization works in that facility so that they can identify whether the problem is with the instruments themselves or whether there still remains a problem with the sterilization machine.