Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony has said equipment has been ordered to establish an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Infectious Disease Hospital at Liliendaal as the number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patients who require hospitalisation continues to rise.
Chairman of the Georgetown Public Hospi-tal Corporation (GPHC) COVID-19 Task Force Dr Tracy Bovell recently stated that it has been observed that compared to earlier months, the number of persons who have tested positive for COVID-19 that need to be hospitalised has increased. This, she added, has resulted in the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) COVID-19 ICU being filled to capacity.
Stabroek News was told that the GPH ICU, under normal circumstances, would only be able to accommodate 14 persons, but with the increase of critical COVID-19 patients being admitted, adjustments had to be made in the hospital to accommodate more patients.
Bovell disclosed that presently all the beds are occupied and with more patients being admitted daily, the hospital has been forced to “shift around” to see how best they can stabilise the patients in the ICU. “Maybe we can step them down to another facility to create space for others persons that can be critically ill. So I think that is one of our main challenges,” she added.
Meanwhile, Anthony disclosed on Wednesday that five of the ventilators that the government had ordered have already entered the country and they have been handed over to the GPHC. Currently there is an urgent need for ventilators in the hospital given the increase in patients being admitted due to COVID-19.
He also informed that several other pieces of medical equipment have been ordered to ensure that the infectious disease hospital can function like a hospital. “We have ordered all the equipment to ensure that we have diagnostic facilities at ocean view so that we will be able to set up at ICU at Ocean View with 29 ICU beds,” he stated.
There are also plans to equip the operating theatre so that if there is a need to operate, it can be done at the hospital instead of transferring the patient to another facility. “So we have ordered all the equipment that is necessary for Ocean View and this morning [Wednesday] we had a team that went into the Ocean View space to look at putting in the lines for oxygen and other things that we will need for the ICU so they have done that preliminary assessment and see how we can get that running as quickly as possible,” he explained.
