RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There are on­ly three more In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) spaces avail­able in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem in T&T for COVID-19 pa­tients, as of Mon­day morn­ing.

The rev­e­la­tion comes just two days af­ter the Min­is­ter of Health warned that the coun­try was on the verge of run­ning out of space to pro­vide this lev­el of crit­i­cal treat­ment to pa­tients.

Speak­ing at the min­istry's vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer of In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said 54 of the 57 ICU beds in T&T were oc­cu­pied and 96 per cent of the pa­tients are not ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. She added that 94.1 per cent of all hos­pi­talised COVID-19 pa­tients were al­so un­vac­ci­nat­ed.

She al­so in­di­cat­ed that there are nine COVID-19 pa­tients re­ceiv­ing ICU care at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ments of hos­pi­tals in the tra­di­tion­al health­care sys­tem.

She said the min­istry is work­ing to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty but ad­mit­ted the con­tin­gency does not al­low for many beds to be added due to re­source con­straints such as med­ical staff to tend to the pa­tients.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the con­tin­gency can fa­cil­i­tate the ad­di­tion of sev­en beds.

Dr Ab­dool-Richards said two ICU spaces were added to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal over the week­end but were filled by Mon­day morn­ing. She con­tin­ued to urge peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed to pro­tect against hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion.

In To­ba­go, there are on­ly two ICU spaces left, while there is on­ly one space left at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal in Trinidad.