Gopeesingh: Let CoP, DPP probe handling of pandemic

FORMER education minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh urged the Commissioner of Police and Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate the Government's handling of the covid19 pandemic, at a UNC briefing on Sunday at the Opposition Leader's office in Port of Spain. He alleged "criminal negligence and misconduct in public office," as he commented on a report laid in the House of Representatives on Friday by a three-person team under Prof Terence Seemungal.

Gopeesingh said the report confirmed the Opposition's recommendations over two years of the pandemic, which he said the Government had repeatedly rejected.

However, opposition pressure had led to this investigation.

Gopeesingh said the report lamented that doctors and nurses slept on mattresses on the floor, while not properly getting their meals. Their short-term work contracts depressed morale, he added.

Unlike a standard ratio of one ICU to one patient, in TT one ICU nurse tended to six patients, he lamented.

He said the report highlighted staff shortages and burnout. "Almost every single doctor complained of overwork to the point of exhaustion,"

Seeing patients and colleagues die had left medical staff psychologically traumatised, Gopeesingh said.

Apart from for one regional health authority, "absolutely nothing" was done to help staff with mental angst, he said of the report.

Gopeesingh lamented the report saying hospitals had just 20 per cent of their required amounts of the anti-covid19 drug Tocilizumab.

He said the Government could have saved many lives by spending $8 million to buy 1,000 doses.

Gopeesingh said the report said that for three weeks some families could not get information on their loved ones in hospital for covid19.

Recalling people contacting him to make such inquiries, he said the Government was callous, insensitive and grossly incompetent.

He hoped the Seemungal report would not go the way of two past reports into public health in 2007 and 2015 respectively chaired by Gladys Gafoor and Winston Welch.

Lamenting over 3,500 covid19 deaths, he urged Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh to resign.

Gopeesingh said the committee could not get details of mortality rates in the ICUs and High Dependency Units (HDUs.)

The report said the committee at first sought data on 90 ICU and HDU patients, but the regional health authorities (RHAs) could not respond so rapidly.

The ethnicity and obesity status of dead patients was excluded in the Excel file sent to the committee, the report said.

Saying co-morbidity data was "entered using an open text format with inconsistent spacing delimiters and spelling that could not be easily coded for analysis, especially given the committee’s tight deadline," the report said, "The comorbidity data were therefore excluded from analysis."

It added, "In addition, the spreadsheet only included hospital admission data, so the outcome of the patients – alive or dead – and the duration of stay were not available."