RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Two more pa­tients at Ward 6 of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal have re­port­ed­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

A source con­firmed that the pa­tients had test­ed pos­i­tive but up to mid­day had not yet been trans­ferred to COVID des­ig­nat­ed hos­pi­tals.

“I am very un­com­fort­able here. The ward is over­packed. The COVID pa­tients are screened off,” the source said.

A pa­tient said nurs­es are wear­ing a full haz­mat to care for the pa­tients.

“But what about the rest of us. We have to be us­ing the toi­let and I see the toi­let is not be­ing san­i­tized. All they do­ing is mop­ping the floor,” he said.

He added, “I feel very scared about stay­ing here. I am at risk. I am afraid to use that bath­room. It has two bath­rooms that we can use, They should al­low the COVID pa­tients to be trans­ferred out.”

A med­ical source con­firmed that the pa­tients were COVID-19 pos­i­tive and arrange­ments were be­ing made to trans­fer them.

On Fri­day, the South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) ad­vised all pa­tients and rel­a­tives to con­tact its Cus­tomer Care de­part­ment if they had con­cerns about COVID is­sues at the ward.

The SWRHA said it has no con­firmed re­ports of these mat­ters un­der re­view or in­ves­ti­ga­tion by our In­fec­tion Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol or Health and Safe­ty De­part­ment, for any ward at this time.

“Our pa­tient sur­veil­lance mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems con­firms that as of Sep­tem­ber 22, 2021 there is no COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients at the ward ar­eas in SFGH or SFTH, that re­quire trans­fer to the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.”

The au­thor­i­ty said any pa­tient af­ter ad­mis­sion for a non-COVID re­lat­ed mat­ter, sub­se­quent­ly found to be COVID-19 pos­i­tive as an in­ci­den­tal find­ing, based on a de­ci­sion to test as may be med­ical­ly re­quired be­fore cer­tain pro­ce­dures, is prompt­ly iso­lat­ed and im­me­di­ate­ly trans­ferred to a des­ig­nat­ed par­al­lel fa­cil­i­ty.

The SWRHA said af­ter the triage screen by the Emer­gency De­part­ment, the ad­mis­sion to the wards and man­age­ment on the wards fol­low strict health and safe­ty, as well as In­fec­tion and Pre­ven­tion pro­to­cols. 

“At­ten­tion is paid to all, whether staff, pa­tient or vis­i­tor on wear­ing face masks, ad­e­quate pa­tient spac­ing on the wards, the lim­it of vis­i­tors to one per­son per day as per na­tion­al pol­i­cy, use of screens be­tween beds and reg­u­lar san­i­ta­tion of all com­mon use ar­eas.”

The SWRHA said all pro­to­cols are scrupu­lous­ly ad­hered to and there is no ev­i­dence of any spread of COVID-19 amongst pa­tients at any wards, which has been the case with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70,000 ad­mis­sions at this fa­cil­i­ty, from March 2020 to the present.