Higher than normal humidity levels is causing some issues for the Cypress Regional Hospital.

In mid July, 22 elective surgeries were post-poned due to the high levels of humidity in the operating room and the risk of surgical site infections that goes along with it.

CEO of the Cypress Health Region, Beth Vachon says the hospital's system wasn't equipped to handle these conditions when the facility was built.

"When our hospital was built, they did an environmental study of seven years prior to designing our H-Vax System," she said. "In that seven years it was dry, and it was more a concern of keeping humidity in the air, but with all of the humidity we've been having, our system isn't able to actually deal with the levels of humidity because for the past ten years, that's just not been an issue."

Heat warnings were issued last week for some regions where the humidex hit values of 40c or more. Vachon says they have hired an engineer to address the issue.

"He'll suggest what the possible fixes need to be in order to resolve the problem once and for all, and to ensure that not only do we have the ability to dehumidify the air, but then when it is dry - because who knows, a couple of summers from now it could be too dry, so that we have the right system in place to actually deal with all of the environmental factors that we seem to be dealing with that were never an issue in the past."

Vachon adds the Health Region is working to fix the problem, and are hoping to have a solution in place by the Spring of 2016.

Until then, the operating rooms are being monitored and are being utilized on a case by case basis, though all emergency surgeries will be dealt with appropriately.