Hospital beds running out for covid19 patients

Bed spaces at hospitals treating covid19 patients is running out.

According to Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards, principal medical officer in charge of institutions, on Saturday, overall hospital capacity in the parallel health care system was 64 per cent.

During a press conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s on Saturday afternoon, she said 73 per cent of the beds in Trinidad were full, as were 25 per cent in Tobago.

Caura hospital was at 78 per cent, Couva was at 71 per cent, Arima at 85 per cent, Augustus Long at 90 per cent, and overnight, St Ann’s went from zero to 18 per cent.

Ninety-five per cent of beds were occupied in the high dependency units, the intensive care units were filled, wards were at 60 per cent, and step-down facilities were at 57 per cent, and the ambulance system is at 50 per cent capacity.

She said the rolling average of new cases over the past seven days was 380 per day, and the number of hospital admissions continued to exceed the number of discharges.

“This really represents an increase of between 30 and 50 patients on a daily level across the hospital system. This gap really represents where we, as people, can look in terms of the covid19 mitigation measures.”

She added that, between Monday and Wednesday, 130 new beds were added to the parallel health care system but, as soon as they increased the number of beds, they were filled.

“Please do not be comforted by the fact that we have a 27 per cent more occupancy level. As I’ve been indicating and as you all know, a bed is no longer a bed. Even though there may be physical beds, the resources that are required to give you the best level of care, may not (be) and are not available.”

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said prior to last weekend there were 542 beds. Last week 130 were added and the ministry would add 80 in two field hospitals erected on the grounds of the Couva hospital and the Jean Pierre Complex, in Port of Spain.

“It is our hope that the surge capacity provided by the 130 plus 80, which is 210, if my maths is correct, that would be more than sufficient to see us through what we are hoping that with the public’s behaviour to stop gathering, that the demand for hospital beds will go down.”

In order to increase the medical personnel, the TT Defence Force would staff the field hospitals. At the moment, only emergency elective surgeries are taking place, and outpatient clinics have been de-escalated to tele-medicine so more doctors and nurses would be free to care for covid19 patients.

Epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds said in the first two weeks of May, out of every 100 people tested, 43 are positive for covid19. There were also over 4,500 cases which is more than any other month since the pandemic began in March 2020.

He added that, for the duration of the pandemic so far, 52 per cent of those infected were male, and 55 per cent of the infected were in the 25 to 49 age group. However, in the past few weeks, there was a slight increase in the number of women being infected as well as an increase in the 55 to 59 age group.

In addition, more of the deaths are now females. Previously, the female mortality rate was around 24 to 25 per cent but it increased to 34.7 per cent of total number of death. Also, the percentage of older people dying has decreased from 70 per cent to 64 per cent with the under 60 age group contributing to 36 per cent of the total number of deaths.

Dr Michelle Trotman, head of thoracic care at the Caura Hospital, urged people to keep up the covid19 guidelines at home as much as possible, especially if a member of the household is sick.

She encouraged members to isolate as much as possible, continue wearing masks, washing hands, keeping surfaces clean and physically distance themselves. She said people should not share the same utensils, hug, sleep on the same bed, or use the same bathroom facilities.

“We in the health field are saying, ‘Our backs are breaking.’ We signed up to help you and then you come to us and we can’t help. We can’t do what we’ve put our lives for.

“In addition, I want to point out that the 4,000 plus people that are home with covid, some are asymptomatic, but some are sick. And we have to respond to those people also, they are not just left there. They are monitored by our doctors and responded to by a health care system that embraces them if they no longer fits the criteria to be home. We want to be prepared and we can’t if the hospital admissions keep going up and up.”

This as 11 more people in TT died of covid19 between Friday and Saturday afternoon, bringing the number of deaths to 276, 107 of which were for the month of May so far.

The 11 were four elderly men with comorbidities, two middle aged men with comorbidities, two elderly women – one with and one without comorbidities, and three middle-aged women with comorbidities.

In addition, 520 new cases were recorded from samples taken from May 11 to 15, which increased the number of active cases to 5,558 and the total number of positive cases since the start of the pandemic to 15,899.

There are 375 people in hospital, an increase of ten; 4,564 in home isolation, an increase of 366; 99 in step down facilities, an increase of 13; and 271 in state quarantine facilities, a decrease of 91.

Thirty-one people were discharged from public health facilities while 134 recovered from home isolation, bringing the number of people recovered to 10,065.