“The Gov­ern­ment needs to ask for in­ter­na­tion­al help as T&T is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. It should not be about sav­ing face but rather, sav­ing lives.”

This was the ur­gent plea last evening by the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTR­NA) Idi Stu­art, who cried as he re­called a COVID-pos­i­tive pa­tient ly­ing on the grass out­side the Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency (A&E) De­part­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope – wait­ing for a bed to be­come avail­able.

Ad­mit­ting he was present when the vi­ral video shot by a woman who had been wait­ing to be triaged at the ad­mis­sions tent was made, Stu­art said, “The pub­lic is now see­ing what has been hap­pen­ing all along. It is spilling out­side of the hos­pi­tal’s walls and they can’t hide it any­more.”

Shocked by yes­ter­day’s fig­ures both in terms of new cas­es and deaths which reached new records of 615 and 11 re­spec­tive­ly, Stu­art said the two field hos­pi­tals which were set up at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day “would not bring much respite for cit­i­zens who are seek­ing care.”

He claimed even though 80 ad­di­tion­al beds had been in­tro­duced in­to the sys­tem, they would have been filled im­me­di­ate­ly by pa­tients who had been await­ing ad­mis­sion from sev­er­al hos­pi­tals across the coun­try.

Stu­art said the time had come for, “All re­tired nurse man­agers and nurs­ing per­son­nel to put on their suits and come out to as­sist these ju­nior nurs­es,” as the rapid in­crease in pa­tients would place a strain on the cur­rent re­sources.

He said, “I am not sure where they are go­ing to get staff to man those field hos­pi­tals. I don’t know if the US is go­ing to come in and as­sist us but we don’t have any staff.”

Re­veal­ing the TTR­NA had been con­tact­ed yes­ter­day to as­sist the au­thor­i­ties in this area, Stu­art said, “There is lit­er­al­ly no nurs­ing per­son­nel avail­able.”

He de­clined to say who had reached out with the re­quest, but Stu­art said there were close to 500 stu­dent nurs­es that could be brought in­to the sys­tem al­most im­me­di­ate­ly – but on­ly if they are paid a stipend.

He said the $800 stipend that had been pre­vi­ous­ly paid to this group of per­sons and was tak­en away, would be nec­es­sary to help them get to and from work.

The TTR­NA head sought to un­der­score just how im­por­tant nurs­es are, as he said, “No mat­ter the best in­ter­ven­tion of a doc­tor, if you don’t have that nurse to con­tin­ue care 24/7, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Stu­art who pre­dict­ed the death rate was on­ly go­ing to get worse in the com­ing days, said while ad­di­tion­al places can be found to house per­sons – car­ing for them would be an im­pos­si­ble task with­out ad­e­quate nurs­ing per­son­nel to staff these lo­ca­tions.

In­di­cat­ing that at least 100 fi­nal year stu­dent nurs­es can be brought in dur­ing the rec­om­mend­ed first phase over one week, Stu­art said the av­er­age lay-per­son can­not be placed in the cur­rent set­ting to ad­min­is­ter the re­quired med­ical care.

He said this should be fol­lowed by an­oth­er 100 sec­ond year stu­dent nurs­es dur­ing the sec­ond week – but with in­creased per­son­nel be­ing brought in, the is­sue of ad­e­quate PPE would al­so have to be con­sid­ered.

Re­count­ing what he wit­nessed when he ar­rived at the EWM­SC just af­ter lunch yes­ter­day, Stu­art said, “I was called there by a nurse who was on her last…as the screen­ing tent set up to triage in­com­ing pa­tients was in a mess. The usu­al sys­tem is the nurs­es test you and if you don’t have COVID, you can pro­ceed to A&E in­side. If you have COVID symp­toms, the pa­tient is kept out­side for fur­ther test­ing. Once you are pos­i­tive, you will be sent to Cou­va.”

“When I went to­day, the tent was hot and it was hu­mid, and the port-a-pot­ty for pa­tients was locked as it was over­flow­ing with fae­ces. There was in ex­cess of 50 peo­ple in one area and an ad­di­tion­al 15 peo­ple on trol­leys to the back with­out any nurs­ing per­son­nel who were at­tend­ing to the cramped tent. I saw oxy­gen fin­ish­ing and it was a night­mare, and I am just watch­ing from out­side the tent. You could see pa­tient fam­i­lies wait­ing and of course, they are frus­trat­ed with the nurs­es and tak­ing it out on them. Nurs­es are telling me that some pa­tients have been wait­ing for four days now…on a bench, on a trol­ley or a chair wait­ing to be ad­mit­ted, which means they have not been show­ered or ti­died. There are a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of pa­tients in­side the hos­pi­tal await­ing ad­mis­sion to Cou­va and more out­side wait­ing to get in.”

Stu­art said though while nurs­es are try­ing to cope un­der the cur­rent con­di­tions, it is hard and with record in­creas­es – it is un­cer­tain just how long again they can con­tin­ue to per­form.