BARRIE, ONT. -- COVID-19 infection rates are decreasing across the province, and with them, hospitalizations are lessening, but the chief of critical care at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) says the Barrie hospital remains overcapacity.

Dr. Chris Martin says cases in both the intensive care unit and inpatient wards have reduced from levels reached a few weeks ago.

But he says we are not in the clear just yet.

"There's definitely a downward trend, but it's not a very steep downward trend," Martin tells CTV News. "In a perfect world, we'd like to see it dropping down rapidly; however, it is more of a gradual decline, so are we out of the woods? No, not yet. But I think we can definitely see the edge of them."

Earlier this week, the province gave the green light for non-urgent surgeries and procedures to resume pending capacity, and Martin says RVH is ready.

Non-emergent procedures were put on hold on April 20 as the hospital struggled to keep up with COVID-19 patients.

"We have to have a very gradual but planned escalation to try to catch up while still maintaining capacity for the continuing COVID-19 patients that are going to come in as well as the other day-to-day emergencies that we deal with," Martin explains.

Hospitals had to direct resources to avoid triaging care as ICU levels reached record levels during the third wave. Martin says many people may not have a full appreciation for how serious the situation was.

"The average person who doesn't know a COVID patient doesn't know how bad it got in the hospital and how bad it still is," he says. "I think our concern is that people may let their guard down a little too soon. I hope that just because we are starting to reopen - which is a good thing - that people still follow the guidelines closely."

Martin says he's mainly concerned with both continuing to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible and that we remain focused on the threats posed by variants.

"We see new variants all the time, and the most recent variants have been affecting more young people who get very sick, and I really hope that we don't see a new variant that poses additional challenges to the one we already have."