A rural Ontario hospital is closing its emergency department until December due to what the health-care organization running it calls a “critical shortage of nurses” and a series of off-and-on closures that have become unsustainable. The Chesley hospital emergency room closed on Friday, with a scheduled reopening date of Dec. 2. Other areas of the hospital like diagnostic imaging services, the inpatient unit and community lab collection will remain operational. The decision to close the ER for two months follows a series of short-notice, temporary closures that the South Bruce Grey Health Centre said are “not a sustainable approach for our staff or the communities we serve. Source: Global News Many doctors and nurses across Canada have been calling for help for months, as the Covid-19 pandemic overwhelmed resources that they say were already stretched thin. Leading to an unparalleled wave of staff shortages that they say is reaching a breaking point. According to Ontario Health, 18 hospitals in the province have had emergency department service interruptions since the end of June, most often for an overnight shift, due to a shortage of nurses. About 46,000 more hospital staff need to be hired in Ontario just to deal with staff turnover, hospital job vacancies, as well as the impact of the pandemic and the increased needs of a growing and aging population, according to the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE. Source: CBC News The Ontario Nurses’ Association said, “announcements of ER closures are becoming all too common and ... they must not be accepted so casually by the government.” We're seeing an unprecedented amount of sustained pressure and strain that has resulted in the need for several hospitals to have to reduce services in their emergency departments in numbers that have not been seen before. What there is very good data on is that the system continues to perform well when it comes to emergent and urgent needs. If you have a heart attack or a stroke or, you need urgent cancer surgery, things like that have largely not been impacted by the pandemic. The challenge really has been that with every wave of the pandemic, it's been sort of a different problem. Early in the pandemic, there was this need for all these ICU beds and that was the focus. And then a wave came along where, ICU wasn't so much the problem, but the medical wards were really filling up with COVID patients. And now in wave seven, we're seeing not so much that the demand for services is up, but the health-care workforce is depleted. Every wave has brought a different kind of challenge. And there hasn’t been enough time between the waves to recover. The shutdown follows a spate of temporary emergency room closures at hospitals across Ontario over the last several months due to lack of staff, particularly nurses. Hospitals are here to serve and will continue to do everything possible to meet the needs of the people of Ontario. Hospitals have said severe staff shortages, along with COVID-19 infections and burnout among health-care workers are to blame for the temporary closures.