I'll answer your question in two ways. One is that everything depends on the configuration of the emergency department and the emergency department's isolation capacity. What that means is that each hospital with an emergency department has different types of rooms. We have rooms called isolation rooms that have negative pressure capabilities, which means it's a room where the airflow is suctioned out of the room. There's a separate bathroom for the patient so the patient never has to leave that room, and there's an anteroom so that you have a place to change before you go in so you can change into PPE.
At Osler, one, because of our experience with SARS—we were one of the SARS designated sites—and the lessons learned from it, and two, because we are close to the airport, we have a flow system in our department so that if a patient comes in who is what we call ILI, or influenza-like illness, which is very similar to COVID, he or she gets triaged separately into that area. We have erected a tent outside for that purpose at each site, so if our COVID-positive patients become such high numbers that we have to utilize the whole ER for COVID-positive patients, then the COVID-negative patients would be seen through our tent.
If a hospital does not have a capacity like ours, then it would behoove them to put structures like this up, sooner rather than later, or work within their community so that certain hospitals see one type of patient and certain hospitals see another type of patient.
We have the luxury of having three facilities. We're a corporation of three hospitals. We have talked about maybe having one facility seeing only COVID patients. We haven't gotten to that point yet, but to answer your question, yes, I agree that people should act sooner. However, it all depends on what their innate capacity is to begin with.