An­na-Lisa Paul

T&T has record­ed the low­est hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem in 53 days. Oc­cu­pan­cy is now es­ti­mat­ed at around 47 per cent.

How­ev­er, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said hos­pi­tals that pro­vide care for se­vere­ly and crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients con­tin­ue to have high oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, she said: “Over­all, we are see­ing less pa­tients in the sys­tem but when we re­view where those pa­tients are be­ing treat­ed, it is at the hos­pi­tals such as Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal, the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal...where the care is high acu­ity care or most se­vere­ly and crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients.”

Dr Ab­dool-Richards said In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) oc­cu­pan­cy was al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er and is now at 46 per cent with 37 out of an avail­able 80 beds oc­cu­pied up to 8 am yes­ter­day.

“We con­tin­ue to see a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of per­sons who are not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed re­quir­ing hos­pi­tal care,” she said.

This means that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 84 per cent of all pa­tients in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem are not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

She added: “We no­ticed a trend of in­creas­ing hos­pi­tal num­bers that was con­firmed on or about Oc­to­ber 19, 2021. That is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 117 days ago. The peak oc­cu­pan­cy oc­curred be­tween the 21 and 23 of De­cem­ber. This oc­cu­pan­cy reached 81 per cent which was above our crit­i­cal zone, our crit­i­cal thresh­old in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem. Since then the hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy and the A&E ad­mis­sions have slow­ly de­clined.”

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Ab­dool-Richards, these de­clines are a far cry from the 200 or so pa­tients that they were see­ing in the last two weeks in De­cem­ber 2021. She warned that the COVID-19 virus and as­so­ci­at­ed strains re­mained “ex­treme­ly un­cer­tain” and coun­tries are con­tin­u­ing to bat­tle to achieve a new nor­mal.

She ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to seek med­ical treat­ment ear­ly if they dis­play any symp­toms and not be­come com­pla­cent if they sus­pect they have the virus.

Vac­cines are be­ing of­fered to free of charge to all mi­grants res­i­dent in T&T, which is in keep­ing with the Health Min­is­ter’s pol­i­cy, she added.

Ab­dool-Richards as­sured there was a track­ing sys­tem to record those that had come for­ward to be vac­ci­nat­ed thus far.

The clin­i­cal up­date from the Min­istry of Health showed 777 new COVID-19 cas­es, push­ing the num­ber of ac­tive cas­es in the coun­try to 21,463.

The 12 record­ed deaths in­clud­ed five el­der­ly males, sev­en el­der­ly fe­males, nine pa­tients of whom had mul­ti­ple co­mor­bidi­ties, while three each had one co­mor­bid­i­ty.

Da­ta from, the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly showed that there were 44 new cas­es record­ed with­in 24 hours but no fa­tal­i­ties. In ad­di­tion, nine of the 11 peo­ple hos­pi­talised are un­vac­ci­nat­ed. There are 459 ac­tive COVID-19 cas­es in To­ba­go.