Beds and military field gurneys were on Sunday set up at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall having been selected as one of the facilities to quarantine and treat COVID-19 patients.
Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo during a virtual media briefing two Saturdays ago had said that the COVID-19 Task Force will be using the sports hall to tend to patients diagnosed with the virus. The hall was transformed into a virtual hospital ward containing 137 military field gurneys and 67 beds.
It was noted that not all of the beds and gurneys were at least three feet apart as should be. Moreover there was no partitioning to isolate patients from each other and avoid cross-infections. The beds and gurneys stood in rows from one end of the sports hall to the other leaving insufficient space to manoeuvre. It could not be verified whether this was the final configuration as no one in authority was present when Stabroek News visited yesterday.
The move comes after the World Health Organization predicted that Guyana could be looking at 20,000 COVID-19 cases by early May. Other facilities that were decided upon for treating coronavirus patients were said to be the National Gymnasium on Mandela Avenue, the Ocean View Hotel and the former Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) building on High Street. These facilities are set to cater to approximately a thousand patients.
