Sto­ry by KEVON FELMINE (kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt)

Ten­sions rose at the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal this morn­ing, as scores of pa­tients were de­nied ac­cess to their out­pa­tient clin­ics.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the hos­pi­tal, se­cu­ri­ty guards wear­ing face masks stood at the hos­pi­tal’s main en­trance, screen­ing for peo­ple who could en­ter the build­ing along Chancery Lane. Pa­tients were told that all clin­ics were can­celled to­day and that they could ei­ther wait four hours for as­sis­tance or re­turn home and wait for a phone call. This an­gered many of the out­pa­tients who crammed the en­trance, wait­ing for an­swers. Those who had tests and scans were al­lowed to go in­side while vis­i­tors were told to get pass­es at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“They take your card and they’re telling you that they have it here. We can ei­ther wait four hours or go home and wait for them to call us. That is not mak­ing sense at all,” Toolsie Gan­ga said.

Gan­ga said many car­diac pa­tients need to get their pre­scrip­tions filled every six months. These pre­scrip­tions can­not be filled in reg­u­lar phar­ma­cies. From as ear­ly as 7 am, scores of out­pa­tients gath­ered out­side the hos­pi­tal, but by 9 am, most of them left.

Many out­pa­tients told Guardian Me­dia, while they un­der­stand that pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures are need­ed to com­bat the spread of the COVID-19, prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion could have avoid­ed this morn­ing’s is­sues.

“They're tak­ing pre­cau­tions and we un­der­stand that but I think this sit­u­a­tion could have been han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly. When you give them your card, they have to go back in­to the sys­tem to check. They could have checked the sys­tem and call us be­fore or the Min­is­ter (of Health) could have made a pub­lic an­nounce­ment that the clin­ics would be closed.

“They're telling you don't min­gle with crowds but when you do that, every­one is crowd­ing here this morn­ing,” an­oth­er pa­tient said.

This pa­tient said he un­der­went heart surgery last year and he needs to ac­cess the clin­ic as part of his re­cov­ery process. He last saw doc­tors in Sep­tem­ber 2019.

Calls to South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) CEO, Dr Bri­an Ar­mour were not an­swered.

There was some con­fu­sion as an SWRHA of­fi­cial said all out­pa­tient clin­ics were in place, while nurs­es said eye, heart and child clin­ics were sus­pend­ed for three weeks.

The SWRHA is ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment to­day.