KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­ly of a 69-year-old COVID-19 pa­tient who re­cov­ered on­ly to con­tract the virus again is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain why she was trans­ferred from the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal to Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, not­ing there are sub-stan­dard con­di­tions at the lat­ter in­sti­tu­tion.
Sharon Dow, who lives in Eng­land, told Guardian Me­dia that the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal was run down and her moth­er is now stay­ing in a ward that has no cur­tains, so light from the sur­round­ing area floods her room at nights, keep­ing her up. 
“The lack of cur­tains al­so means that she has no pri­va­cy. The whole en­vi­ron­ment is not con­ducive to her re­cov­ery. I fear that she will fall in­to ill health, not on­ly phys­i­cal­ly but men­tal­ly as well. This is in stark con­trast to her ex­pe­ri­ence at Cou­va,” Dow told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.
Dow ex­plained that doc­tors ini­tial­ly di­ag­nosed her moth­er with COVID-19 and she spent sev­en weeks in the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and af­ter re­cov­er­ing, the near­by Home of Foot­ball step-down fa­cil­i­ty. She said her moth­er, who lives in San Fer­nan­do, re­cov­ered quick­ly with ex­cel­lent med­ical and nurs­ing care, de­scrib­ing it as of the “high­est stan­dard” with the pro­fes­sion­al­ism demon­strat­ed by all staff. How­ev­er, af­ter her moth­er was retest­ed by doc­tors last Sat­ur­day, she was found to be pos­i­tive again but asymp­to­matic.

“The (Cou­va) hos­pi­tal was very clean and com­fort­able with good cater­ing. I am sure that these fac­tors aid­ed her speedy re­cov­ery and now she is asymp­to­matic. She has test­ed pos­i­tive, but in all oth­er re­spects, she is well,”
Dow said last Sat­ur­day, her moth­er re­turned to the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal for blood tests and in­stead of be­ing re­turned to the step-down fa­cil­i­ty she was tak­en to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal.
“Up­on ar­rival, she was told that her fam­i­ly has to bring food for her. Of course, this is un­fea­si­ble giv­en the fact that the fam­i­ly is in San Fer­nan­do,” Dow said.
“She ac­cepts that her swabs are pos­i­tive and she must re­main in iso­la­tion for some time but how is she meant to cope and re­cov­er ful­ly in this sub-stan­dard en­vi­ron­ment? She is a 69-year-old grand­moth­er who has coped so well for sev­en weeks.

“She does not need to be shunt­ed from one hos­pi­tal to an­oth­er, es­pe­cial­ly where this last one is a re­al step back­wards. Why was she moved? What is the ben­e­fit of the move to Cau­ra?”

Dow said her moth­er may have ini­tial­ly con­tract­ed the virus from her fa­ther, who has al­so since re­cov­ered.

When asked about the pa­tient yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­fused to di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion cit­ing pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.