TORONTO — An Ontario hospital network has estimated that 35 people may have died during the COVID-19 pandemic because their cardiac surgeries weren’t performed, Health Minister Christine Elliott said Tuesday.
The report was released by Toronto’s University Health Network, Elliott said, though the organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thousands of surgeries were postponed or cancelled in order to ensure enough acute and critical capacity in Ontario hospitals for a possible surge of COVID-19 patients. “I don’t want to call it collateral damage because they are deaths and that is very concerning and sad to all of us, but we were required to make decisions,” Elliott said. “Because of the space that was created in