The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

inside opon e people 10 sports 12 classified 13 2 woman dies despite living minutes away from hospital local family demands answers community calendar event child car seat clinic when jan 15 9 am to 1 pm where thornhill fire station 8841133 serving whitchurchstouffville since 1888 1a the end of the muslim month of ramadan is celebrated by breaking the holy fast whitchurchstouffyihe public library touffville tribune 5qcents including gst 16 pages flufree youre one of the lucky ones access restricted to seniors homes by jennifer brown staff writer call it the real y2k bug as the new millennium begins it is queasy stomachs sick from the flu not computer glitches that are causing trouble for hospitals and nursing homes following an outbreak of influenza a york regions public health department is restricting visitation to seven of the regions 10 homes for the aged and is investigating another nine retire ment homes its high for the region in gen eral and for being this early in the season said faran kolbe man ager of infectious diseases at the public health department visits to homes for the aged affected by the flu are now restricted to family members only the serious strain of flu is also pushing already busy hospital staff to the limit in the general population a lot of what were seeing in emer gency and walkin clinics is influenza if you havent had it youre one of the lucky few said grace volkening manager of infection control at york county hospital in some cases people are falling ill to a nasty combination of normal flu symptoms com bined with vomiting and diar rhea see flu page 3 thursday jan 62000 slip sliding away staff photosjoerd witteveen to reach us 905 6402 1 00 er crisis batters mason posival 2 gets a hand from his mom tanya posival after his successful first skate at the stouffville rec centre tuesday ambulances ordered to bypass local emergency wards by jennifer brown staff writer in her 30 years as a nurse and two decades in the er dale smith hasnt seen anything like it before this week the york central nurse and emergency room coordinator had 18 patients on hold in the hospitals emergency department they were all waiting for beds and some had been there for three days theyre stable we try not to hold critical care patients explained smith coordinator of emergency medicine at york central in the past week smith has worked what seems like endless shifts of overtime as the hospital struggles through a desperate period the emergency ward has been so busy the hospital has been forced to go on critical care bypass ccb several times which is sup posed to mean that all ambulances and patients will be turned away no matter how sick they are but even when the hospital is on ccb smith said they have still been accepting crit ically ill patients because they know most hos pitals across the gta are in the same mess if they tell me they have a code 4 life threatening with chest pain they do come in but we tell them we may have to treat them on the ambulance stretcher at least it prevents them from going elsewhere into the commu nity said smith paramedics are very frustrated and wor ried that patients will come to a bad outcome see no end page 3 monday night wing night 2 fori wings 2 ib for 595 vwted best wings vlntown no chkvrot-ct- inte oldomobile the little dealership with a big 5336 highway 7 just east ocmccomn 2941440 toll free 18008922209 wwwnorthpointechcvoldscom sale hours s mdnthufs 9 am 9 pm fri9am6pm it 9 am r 6 pm service hours monthurs 7 am 7pm i fri 730 am 6 pm i sat 8 am 1pm szmtm service manager specials check steering rack lines reflush fluid from resevoir add new fluid puistax i goodwttn scnkrj nlutsru seafood restaurant 5812 main st stouffville 6406115 live nova scotia lobster fresh seafood steak gourmet pizza every tuesday buy 2 pasta get 1 free