If the num­bers of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ue, the par­al­lel health care sys­tem could run out of beds by month end.

Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials on Sat­ur­day sound­ed a dire warn­ing that they were run­ning low on re­sources as the COVID-19 num­bers con­tin­ue to rise in the coun­try.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh warned that if the high case lev­els con­tin­ue, the hos­pi­tals would sim­ply "not have space.”

The min­istry’s act­ing prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer in charge of in­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards broke down the wor­ry­ing fig­ures. She warned that if the spike trend con­tin­ues, it would al­so start to im­pact the nor­mal health care sys­tem. On Sat­ur­day the coun­try record­ed 248 new cas­es and two deaths.

The Gov­ern­ment last year in­sti­tut­ed a par­al­lel health care sys­tem to deal with the COVID-19 cas­es while al­low­ing the nor­mal health care sys­tem to run with­out in­ter­fer­ence.

"How­ev­er, giv­en the in­creas­ing num­ber of cas­es on a dai­ly ba­sis, rough­ly the rolling av­er­age over the last sev­en days is some­where in the vicin­i­ty of 191 cas­es per day, ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten per cent of cas­es would re­quire hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and a hos­pi­tal bed," Ab­dool-Richards said.

"That means for every 100 pos­i­tive cas­es, ten per­sons need to be ad­mit­ted to a hos­pi­tal in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem.”

Ab­dool-Richards said for every ten ad­mis­sions, on­ly two pa­tients are be­ing dis­charged.

"That means that there is a dai­ly net gain of eight pa­tients on a dai­ly ba­sis," she said.

Ab­dool-Richards said there were over 500 beds in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem across the sev­en hos­pi­tals.

"If we are to use the fig­ures of yes­ter­day (Fri­day), which would have 183 per­sons in hos­pi­tal and we look at to­day's (bed) ca­pac­i­ty, which is 500, we are look­ing at rough­ly 300 spaces left and the beds can ac­tu­al­ly be utilised with­in three weeks to a month," Ab­dool-Richards said.

Deyals­ingh said while the min­istry could add beds, it could not add the need­ed staff.

"Yes, we can add more beds, yes we can add more hos­pi­tals, but there is a lim­it to the hu­man ca­pac­i­ty to man these beds," he said.

"We are not adding hun­dreds of more doc­tors, hun­dreds of more nurs­es and it is this same hu­man re­source that we have to de­pend on to vac­ci­nate the pop­u­la­tion.”

Deyals­ingh said overnight—be­tween Fri­day and Sat­ur­day—they had to ramp up haemo-dial­y­sis on ten pa­tients.

"And if we con­tin­ue at this rate, peo­ple who need it two to three weeks from now would not have a dial­y­sis chair," he said.

The in­crease in COVID has cas­es forced the min­istry to re-op­er­a­tionalise the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, adding 67 beds there. Ten peo­ple were ad­mit­ted to that fa­cil­i­ty be­tween Fri­day night and Sat­ur­day.

The Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal was tak­en off the COVID grid back in Feb­ru­ary when the num­bers were so low that it was not need­ed. How­ev­er, the steady climb in cas­es has put the hos­pi­tal back in use.

The Min­istry of Health was al­so forced to add 50 beds at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal to deal with the steadi­ly ris­ing num­bers. The Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal, which was first ear­marked to on­ly treat sus­pect­ed cas­es, has now been ful­ly tran­si­tioned to treat con­firmed cas­es. This adds an­oth­er 48 beds to treat con­firmed cas­es.

"We have no­ticed, es­pe­cial­ly in the last week, the per­cent­age of the over­all oc­cu­pan­cy of the hos­pi­tal sys­tem in­creased to a max­i­mum of 50 per cent," Ab­dool-Richards said.

She said there was al­so an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple be­ing ad­mit­ted to the wards, while the In­ten­sive Care Units have al­so seen an in­crease in ad­mis­sions, as has the High De­pen­den­cy Units.

"If we con­tin­ue on this trend, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the re­cent num­ber, we will not have the par­al­lel health care sys­tem avail­able when we re­al­ly need the bed for your­self, for your co-work­er, for your fam­i­ly and oth­ers," she said.

"The par­al­lel health care sys­tem would not be here for you, if you need it, if we con­tin­ue this sort of in­creas­ing trend.”

Of­fi­cials warned that if the num­bers con­tin­ue to climb, the min­istry will be forced to utilise space out­side the par­al­lel health sys­tem to deal with COVID pa­tients.

"We have been notic­ing be­tween weeks 14 and 16, a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the over­all oc­cu­pan­cy in the hos­pi­tals in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem," she said.

Minister of Health, Terrence Deyalsingh

Ab­dool-Richards said five out of the sev­en par­al­lel health care sys­tems were cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion to man­age COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients.

"These beds are quick­ly be­com­ing oc­cu­pied with ill COVID-19 pa­tients," she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ab­dool-Richards, while the hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sion fig­ure dropped to 24 per cent, it was on­ly be­cause of the 117 beds added to the grid.

"Had it not been for these in­creas­es, we would ac­tu­al­ly be clos­er in the range of 37 to 40 per cent in terms of hos­pi­tal oc­cu­pan­cy," she said.

Ab­dool-Richards al­so said peo­ple who are COVID-pos­i­tive are now pre­sent­ing to hos­pi­tal "very ill" and that's the rea­son for the in­creased deaths.

"Please ex­er­cise per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in how we pre­vent COVID-19," she said.

While the Gov­ern­ment has in­sti­tut­ed new lock­downs for malls and restau­rants, street vend­ing is still open and Deyals­ingh warned against con­gre­gat­ing at these spots.

He said there were "dis­turb­ing videos" of peo­ple con­gre­gat­ing at street ven­dors at the Ed­die Hart Ground in Tacarigua, Cross Cross­ing in San Fer­nan­do and the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port of Spain and at Curepe junc­tion.

"This is not the time for dis­cern­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to be con­gre­gat­ing by the hun­dreds to buy food," Deyals­ingh said.

"Shel­ter in place and on­ly come out now to go to the phar­ma­cy and the gro­cery and to go to work, cook at home.”

In­dia's cri­sis

Mean­while, In­dia is cur­rent­ly deal­ing with per­haps the worst-case sce­nario of an unchecked COVID-19 spike.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, In­dia's health care sys­tem is so over­whelmed that they have run out of oxy­gen for COVID-19 pa­tients.

In­dia on Sat­ur­day set yet an­oth­er dai­ly glob­al record with 401,993 new cas­es, tak­ing its tal­ly to more than 19.1 mil­lion. It was re­port­ed that an­oth­er 3,523 peo­ple died with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od on Sat­ur­day, rais­ing the over­all fa­tal­i­ties to 211,853, ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­istry.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, all oxy­gen beds are oc­cu­pied and on­ly two out of the dis­trict's 329 ICU units were free on April 27.

Re­ports sug­gest though that the ac­tu­al num­bers of deaths are much high­er and a lot of is un­re­port­ed.