Medical Director of Mount St. John’s Medical Centre (MSJMC) Medical Director, Dr Albert Duncan, said 40 people were hospitalised with the COVID-19 disease.
He said some patients were at MSJMC and others were being treated at the Infectious Disease Control Centre (IDC).
“At present, we have 33 patients that are hospitalised somewhere in the hospital system between the IDC and the hospital proper that are confirmed and seven patients that are waiting for confirmation,” Duncan said on state media Monday night.
He said those awaiting confirmation had not yet received a PCR test result but had tested positive using rapid antigen tests.
The Medical Director said some of the patients at the hospital were in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
“We have a total of 16 people in the IDC, we have five people in the ICU, we have the COVID ward that we just established, we have a total of 14 people on that ward, and the ER has four people in the ER at present”, he revealed.
The people in the ICU, as you could imagine, are seriously ill. We have a total of three out of four people in the ICU on the respirator, and one person is receiving CPAP, which is a form of oxygen therapy without the use of the ventilators,” Dr Duncan added.
The Medical Director said, “the other folks are between moderate to mild”. He further revealed, “Most of the patients presently now in he IDC has been down-staged to mild disease; a total of 11 out of 16. The other five are moderate.”
Despite reporting some challenges, Dr Duncan said he believed the hospital was prepared to manage a rise in cases.
“We’re equipped to take some more people in the hospital itself at Mount St. John’s based on the arrangements we have made and at this time we’re speculating that we can probably manage about 50 people in the hospital environment as it is right now,” he said.
“The more the patients become severely ill, then we’ll be challenged from a human resource point of view because we need people to run the ventilators and do the critical care.”
“Right now, we’re able to cope with what we have in terms of critical care and the manpower. We’re having some trouble, some people are not well, some people have been sick and so forth, so that has put a little strain on the system, but right now we’re managing very well, and we just have to decide to share the resource where they are needed”, the Medical Director explained.
As Dr Duncan informed the public via State Media of the Increase in Hospitalization, Trumpet News has learnt that the Country should brace for another spike in Covid-19 numbers, our source informed us that the upcoming dashboard would show an increase in numbers even more than daily record already set by previous dashboards, due to increase testing.
However, there are persons accusing the Ministry of Health of not reporting accurate daily numbers.
