SOME HOSPITALS OVER CAPACITY FOR COVID PATIENTS

President of the Jamaica Medical Doctors’ Association, Dr Mindi Fitz-Henley, says that the current situation with some of the island’s hospitals being over capacity with COVID patients will become much worse if the Government doesn’t act decisively.

“It is quite simple, there will be a shortage of oxygen in our country, a shortage of beds. Persons who come in with asthma could unfortunately reach a stage where no one is there to help them. So persons could die from things that are easily treatable if it is that hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 and all of the staff is dealing with COVID-19 patients,” she told THE STAR.

“Prior to this when we had tighter restrictions we see that the numbers were not this high, in fact they were doing quite well. But with the loosening of some of the restrictions our numbers are going back to days gone by when we were in horrible situations and running out of oxygen, which is something that we don’t want,” she continued.

The most affected hospitals are Savanna-laMar at 167 per cent; Mandeville Regional and Spanish Town Hospitals at 160 each; St Ann’s Bay at 135; Cornwall Regional at 110 per cent;

May Pen at 108; and the University Hospital of the West Indies at 100 per cent.

As of August 7, there were 379 new cases confirmed by the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) with a positivity rate of 37.8 per cent. The MOHW also noted three new deaths bringing that number to 1,222 with two others under investigation. There were 54, 859 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Fitz-Henley said Jamaicans must not wait until the situation becomes dire to adhere to the health and safety measures or to get vaccinated.

“Vaccines are present, we need each and every person to go. The excuses before that there weren’t enough, they were watching to see what will happen to other people. There are billions of people right now who are vaccinated, we know that it is safe and we know that we need to get people vaccinated. That’s the only way we can get a handle on this,” she said.

Fitz-Henley noted that persons come to hospitals for various reasons including motor vehicle crashes, heart attacks and emergency C-sections.

“Those things can be affected by increasing COVID patients in the hospitals and we have seen it happen and don’t want to go back there,” she said.