(UPDATED) CMO, Abdool-Richards: Parallel healthcare system has not collapsed

PRINCIPAL medical officer in charge of institutions Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Roshan Parasram have said the parallel health care system to deal with the covid19 pandemic has not collapsed.

They were speaking during the Health Ministry's virtual news conference on Monday.

Abdool-Richards said, "Although the parallel health care system is at a 73 per cent level overall in Trinidad and Tobago in terms of the hospitals, I would not say that it has collapsed.

"But it is very close to being overwhelmed, and its resilience is being tested."

She said the St Ann’s, Augustus Long Hospital, Caura, Arima Hospital, Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility, and Scarborough General Hospitals are currently at 100, 92, 86, 77, 70, and 32 per cent capacity respectively. She said the step-down facilities at UTT, Debe Campus, and Point Fortin were at 100, 74, and 40 per cent capacity respectively.

Abdool-Richards reiterated her caution that straining the parallel health care system could place a strain on the regular health care system.

She said the current rolling average of cases for the past seven days was 414. Of these, for every 100 cases, 18 people were being admitted, while seven people were being discharged. She said the hospitals were seeing an additional 40 people a day.

The Health Ministry has additional resources, she said, "such as ventilators, which we are using to incrementally, and on a phased basis, increase the capacity."

But she warned," These resources are of course limited and will run out if we continue at this trend."

Abdool-Richards also said efforts are under way to increase bed capacity at UTT's Valsayn campus from 40 to 60.

Parasram said intensive care unit (ICU) and high dependency unit (HDU) capacities have been reached at the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility.

He said ICUs are being set up at the Pt Fortin hospital, and there are ICUs in Arima as well.

Parsaram said further additional ICU and HDU capacity will be created "with the field hospitals coming on stream by Wednesday,"

He reiterated, "We have not reached full capacity as yet, but again, it depends on how the cases go.

"The quicker we can get the total numbers down, the proportion of those people needing hospitalisation will of course decrease as well."

He said while the field hospitals came with some HDU and ICU elements, there were other elements which would need to be sourced locally.

Parasram said the 40 confirmed cases of the P1 variant in TT have not been related to any of the deaths.

He explained, "More or less, the trends remain similar: a slight decrease in the (number) in the higher age groups, and you are seeing some in the 50s and the 40s.

"We are seeing a slight increase in the female-to-male ratio, where for most of the pandemic, you would have had females accounting for 25 per cent, males for 75 per cent."

Abdool-Richards said there were 20 confirmed cases of covid19 at one ward at the St Ann's hospital, but these patients have been isolated and they are being managed similarly to patients at the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility.

Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh said there were several measures being implemented to deal with manpower shortages at the regional health authorities. He said these included rationalising staff, bringing in more staff, choosing which elective surgeries to perform, scaling down outpatient clinics, a move towards telemedicine and automatic referral of prescriptions.