The med­ical health care sys­tem is burst­ing at its seams as the coun­try's COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ue to rise on a dai­ly ba­sis.

The Cou­va Hos­pi­tal is over­bur­dened with this pan­dem­ic with no more than two nurs­es left to at­tend to at least 30-plus sta­ble COVID-19 pa­tients on a gru­elling 12-hour shift.

The short­age of nurs­ing staff at the hos­pi­tal is now a cause for con­cern as the num­ber of cas­es in the coun­try con­tin­ues to rise dai­ly.

A source at the hos­pi­tal told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the first phase of the virus, the hos­pi­tal was flood­ed with nurs­es which made their jobs eas­i­er.

“In one shift you had as much as sev­en to 11 nurs­es.”

But when the coun­try en­tered the sec­ond wave of the pan­dem­ic, the med­ical source said the num­ber of nurs­es be­gan to dwin­dle.

“Last night (Fri­day) two nurs­es had to at­tend to more than 30 COVID-19 pa­tients dur­ing a 12-hour shift,” the source said.

Some of their du­ties in­volved tak­ing the pa­tients’ vi­tal signs, ad­min­is­ter­ing med­ica­tion and writ­ing up re­ports.

The nurs­es who signed a three-month con­tract with the NCRHA are not paid by the Gov­ern­ment but rather by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank. The source said these con­tract­ed nurs­es do not get sick leave or time off.

Their con­tracts will ex­pire on Sep­tem­ber 30.

The source al­so said that some of the nurs­es who worked at the hos­pi­tal were re­as­signed to oth­er RHAs which led to a short­fall in staff.

The hos­pi­tal has reg­is­tered nurs­es, nurs­ing man­agers, in­fec­tion/pre­ven­tion con­trol nurs­es and ICU nurs­es.

“On a shift, you can work with four nurs­es but to be on the safe side six would be ad­e­quate.”

The source ad­mit­ted that nurs­es who have been putting their lives at risk at the health in­sti­tu­tion are not swabbed.

“The pro­ce­dure is once you get swabbed you have to be quar­an­tined for 14 days.”