Dr. Alex Dong doesn’t wear his wedding ring anymore when he goes to work at London Health Sciences Centre because it could become contaminated.
The only items he takes now are the essentials, like his phone and driver’s licence, which he locks safely away in a Ziploc bag that has to be sterilized before he leaves the hospital.
Once home, to keep from contaminating anyone or anything inside, he has to strip down in his garage and immediately jump into the shower.
It’s become the new normal for the emergency department physician and his colleagues at Victoria Hospital. Similar stories are also playing out across the country as frontline medical staff, increasingly short on personal protective equipment, work to treat a growing number of