The North Bay Regional Health Centre has closed the doors of its COVID-19 assessment centre.
Paul Heinrich, the North Bay Regional Health Centre president CEO, discussed the change during a provincial funding announcement at the facility on Friday.
"I think globally people are recognizing that we have been successful in battling COVID-19, and it is time to get back to normal," said Heinrich.
"I am pretty proud of how progressive our organization has been in terms of predicting the right timing to remove different measures. You would have noticed that we closed our assessment centre and, in fact, the instruction from the government this past week was that all assessment centres will be closed by the end of June.
Heinrich says they will carefully transition the remaining testing work to partners such as retail pharmacies.
"We will look to re-invest in key personnel that have been working there into higher value-added work," he said.
"I cannot reveal everything about that yet but that is exciting too."
See related: Chirico brothers signalling end of local pandemic response?
The closure of the COVID-19 assessment centre at the North Bay Regional Health Centre comes on the heels of news from the North Bay-Parry Sound District Health Unit, which announced last week they will stop reporting COVID-19 data publicly.
"As our COVID-19 situation has remained stable for quite some time, we have decided to sunset the weekly social media COVID-19 update, however, the COVID-19 Status Report dashboard, on our website, continues to be updated weekly on Wednesdays at 3 p.m.", Dr. Chirico told BayToday's Stu Campaigne.
"Should our COVID-19 situation change at any point where there is an increased risk to the public, we will be sure to communicate this through media and social media."
