Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced the partial resumption of elective surgeries in Victoria.
With just 37 active cases in regional Victoria, and 991 statewide, Mr Andrews said elective surgeries will resume in regional areas from tomorrow.
“Essentially we’ll see the percentage [of elective surgeries conducted] from tomorrow in regional Victoria go back to around 75%” the Premier said
He said that figure would then jump to 85% from 28 September.
“Under this cautious and safe reintroduction of elective surgery, we plan to have approximately 18,750 additional elective surgeries across private and public hospitals in October, and an extra 10,500 surgeries across those settings in November,” said Mr Andrews.
“That will mean that we can deal with the backlog – and I do, again, apologise to those who have had to wait for their surgery, but the nature of this pandemic, we had to create capacity for aged care residents who potentially needed to come into hospital.
“There was also a safety issue with as much virus in the community, many people who need elective surgery, they’ve got other underlying health issues, so there were a number of factors that had to be balanced there.”
He reiterated that category one surgery – the most urgent – had continued during the pandemic.
“There’s been no change to that and the most urgent Category 2 have continued as well.”
“These will by and large be people in Category 3 and those that are in that second half, or the back end of Category 2.
“This will be good news for them, but noone will have to wait any longer than is absolutely necessary to get the care that they need.”
