Trauma surgeon and intensive care specialist Damian Paton-Gay explained that his Royal Alex team is specially trained to treat the most severely injured patients, but COVID-19 complicated things.“People who are severely injured aren’t going to be able to answer the same [COVID-19] screening questions as everyone else,” Paton-Gay told Global News.And because testing takes time, there was no way to know a patient’s status immediately.To minimize the risk to other patients and staff, the team treated each patient as though they were carrying the novel coronavirus.He described the process of handling a mass trauma situation like the Icefield crash as an “immense” machine.It started with first responders on the scene, triaging and sending.