“Increased access to elective surgery is good news for members of the community who are on specialists’ waiting lists for their operations,” Dr Howlett said.
ERH will be taking a staged approach when deciding which surgeries will go ahead.
Each hospital will individually assess its capacity based on staff availability and COVID-19 demands, with 44 hospitals including ERH still operating as COVID-19 streaming hospitals.
Dr Howlett has explained that ERH would need to take its “continuing role as a COVID streaming hospital” into account when considering its capacity for elective surgeries.
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said changes were occurring as a result of the Omicron wave subsiding.
“With hospitalisations steadily declining and staff availability improving, we’re in a strong position to remove the remaining restrictions and ensure delayed appointments can be rescheduled as quickly as possible,” he said.
In regional Victoria, public hospitals will continue to deliver any elective surgery based on their individual capacity.
The cap for regional private hospitals will be increased from the current 75 per cent to up to 100 per cent on February 21.
Hospitals in metropolitan Melbourne will also be seeing changes.
Public hospitals in Melbourne will be able to perform category two surgeries from February 21.
From February 21, private hospitals in metropolitan Melbourne can undertake up to 75 per cent of any elective surgery activity, increasing from 50 per cent.
It will be reassessed as to whether both public and private hospitals in metropolitan Melbourne can resume to full capacity from February 28.
The rolling seven-day average of COVID-19 hospitalisations is 457 patients, down from a peak of more than 1200 patients in mid-January.
The number of staff unavailable due to COVID-19 has dropped by about two thirds, currently about 1400 people.
“Our entire healthcare workforce has done an incredible job getting us through the Omicron wave. Our approach needs to be cautious and steady to ensure they’re able to cope without being further affected by fatigue and furloughs,” Mr Foley said.
Emergency surgery has continued without interruption throughout the pandemic.
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