Canterbury DHB makes changes to visiting at its hospitals and health centres under Alert Level 2

Please attribute comment to Dr Sue Nightingale, Incident Controller, Canterbury DHB Emergency Coordination Centre

Canterbury DHB has made changes to its visitor restrictions under Alert Level 2. The key changes are at Christchurch Hospital where visiting hours have changed.

For most areas at Christchurch Hospital public visiting was previously from 11am – 1pm, then again from 3:00pm – 8:00pm. This week we condensed visiting hours at Christchurch Hospital and under Alert Level 2 our new visiting hours are between 3pm and 9pm until further notice.

The busiest time in the hospital for clinicians is usually between 8am and 2:30pm when it’s a hive of activity and we want to keep that time visitor-free wherever possible. Our current facilities are not spacious and having fewer people around at that time means staff have the space to observe physical distancing when not providing direct patient care.

There is still one nominated person per patient for the duration of their stay. Charge nurse managers can make exceptions on compassionate grounds.

All visitors still need to be checked in at main entrances and contact details of all visitors are recorded on arrival.

At Burwood Hospital all visitors need to be checked in at the main entrance on Burwood Road, and two nominated people can visit for the duration of a patient’s stay but they must visit at different times during the visiting hours of 11am – 7pm.

There is no change to visiting at Christchurch Women’s Hospital under Alert Level 2 with women in labour allowed two support people for the duration of her labour and birth.

Full details of further changes to visiting at other Canterbury DHB facilities are available on our website.

As always, please don’t visit if you’re unwell and remember the usual public health precautions such as hand hygiene and physical distancing (wherever possible stay two metres away from people you don’t know, and one metre away from people you do know).