Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The par­al­lel health­care sys­tem now stands at 41 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy as hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions con­tin­ue to in­crease, prompt­ing the Min­istry of Health to add ad­di­tion­al beds to one fa­cil­i­ty.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al COVID-19 brief­ing, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said ten beds were added to the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal step-down fa­cil­i­ty, in­creas­ing its ca­pac­i­ty from 35 spaces to 45.

“The hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions will mir­ror the in­crease in the num­ber of con­firmed COVID cas­es, more COVID cas­es means there are more high-risk per­sons who would be in­fect­ed and they would be hos­pi­talised,” she said.

Ab­dool-Richards said cur­rent­ly, six per cent of all cas­es will re­quire hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion.

Since the last week in Ju­ly, the coun­try has wit­nessed an in­crease in the sev­en-day rolling av­er­age of con­firmed cas­es.

As of Mon­day, T&T was record­ing some 280 new in­fec­tions per day, while just one month ago the fig­ure was half that at 140 cas­es on av­er­age per day. This has led to an in­crease in hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions across all lev­els of care—ward lev­el and in the ICUs. The in­crease is al­so be­ing wit­nessed in the ac­ci­dent and emer­gency de­part­ments of the tra­di­tion­al health­care sys­tem, with 28 pa­tients cur­rent­ly await­ing trans­fer in­to COVID-19 fa­cil­i­ties.

Ab­dool-Richards said the am­bu­lance us­age has al­so in­creased, with 20 per cent of the GM­RTT fleet now be­ing utilised for pa­tient trans­fers.

Last week, the Min­istry of Health re­ac­ti­vat­ed the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal and UTT Val­sayn step-down fa­cil­i­ties in the face of the ris­ing num­bers. It’s the first time they are be­ing utilised since they were all de­ac­ti­vat­ed ear­li­er this year amid de­creas­ing hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions.

Ab­dool-Richards called on the pop­u­la­tion to take the nec­es­sary steps to pro­tect them­selves and their loved ones from the dis­ease. She al­so thanked all health­care work­ers for their ef­forts in fight­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Mean­while, the min­istry yes­ter­day re­port­ed four deaths from COVID-19, two el­der­ly males and two el­der­ly fe­males all with mul­ti­ple co-mor­bidi­ties. There were al­so 362 new in­fec­tions from sam­ples col­lect­ed be­tween Au­gust 15 and 16.