An­na-Lisa Paul

This coun­try’s par­al­lel health­care sys­tem which was set up to deal di­rect­ly with COVID-19 cas­es and pre­vent the tra­di­tion­al health ser­vice from be­com­ing over­whelmed is fac­ing a pos­si­ble col­lapse with­in the next ten days if no sharp de­clines are record­ed from mea­sures to stem rapid in­fec­tion rates.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards yes­ter­day plead­ed with cit­i­zens to un­der­stand the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion the health sec­tor is now bat­tling, as she said this coun­try was now on the “tip­ping point” of los­ing all the strides it had pre­vi­ous­ly achieved to stop the vi­ral spread.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Ab­dool-Richards, who formed part of the team ad­vis­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on what steps need­ed to be adopt­ed ur­gent­ly to en­sure T&T does not end up like some oth­er coun­tries where hos­pi­tals were over­whelmed, ap­pealed to peo­ple to ad­here to pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions to wash hands, so­cial dis­tance, and wear masks.

Total weekly positive cases

She said the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem had a max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty of 542 beds spread across sev­en hos­pi­tals to man­age COVID-19 pa­tients.

She added that an av­er­age of 13.6 per cent of new cas­es were ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tals dai­ly, while on­ly 6.6 per cent of hos­pi­talised pa­tients are dis­charged each day.

Ex­am­in­ing cas­es be­tween March 1 and May 2, Ab­dool-Richards said they had found that, “14 out of every 100 COVID pos­i­tive pa­tients need to be ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal be­cause they are un­well.”

Ad­mit­ting that a COVID-pos­i­tive pa­tient may re­quire a va­ri­ety of care rang­ing from oxy­gen pro­vi­sion to in­ten­sive care and even he­modial­y­sis in some cas­es, she said some peo­ple will have longer hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion pe­ri­ods than oth­ers which could vary from as lit­tle as three days to 21 days.

She claimed there had been a sig­nif­i­cant dai­ly in­crease in the hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion of peo­ple dur­ing this last week and ex­plained it was a red flag for au­thor­i­ties as the num­bers be­ing ad­mit­ted far ex­ceed­ed the num­bers be­ing dis­charged.

Positive cases by sex.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH

“As of this morn­ing (yes­ter­day), the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem has 260 COVID pos­i­tive pa­tients in hos­pi­tal which puts it at a 48 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. The ma­jor­i­ty of these pa­tients are in the wards. With­in ten days, the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem will be­come over­whelmed if we con­tin­ue at this rate,” she said.

She said the fact that hos­pi­tals were fill­ing at faster rates than they were be­ing emp­tied, “is a cause for con­cern as it means that re­sources which are lim­it­ed are now go­ing to be ex­pend­ed and may com­pro­mise the qual­i­ty of care in oth­er ar­eas.”

In pre­sent­ing the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal up­date, Dr Av­ery Hinds al­so paint­ed a dire pic­ture for T&T as he said they had record­ed a steep up­ward climb in cas­es dur­ing re­cent weeks re­sult­ing in in­creased hos­pi­tal­iza­tion rates.

As he an­nounced pro­jec­tions from the da­ta col­lect­ed and analysed so far, Hinds said, “At the cur­rent rate of speed, look­ing at the ac­tive cas­es, we are on track to have alarm­ing num­bers of ac­tive cas­es by May 22…look­ing up­wards of 10,000.”

Projected increase in active cases.

He re­vealed that max­i­mum hos­pi­tal ca­pac­i­ty with cur­rent rates could be reached in as few as sev­en days or ten days at most.

Hinds said this was a trend they want­ed “to curb, halt and re­verse.”

Hinds said oth­er trends had been not­ed where slight­ly more fe­males were now dy­ing from this virus, while deaths were be­ing record­ed in younger peo­ple, some of whom were in their 40s and 50s.

Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards