Sascha Wil­son

Po­lice were sum­moned to the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day af­ter scores of out­pa­tients as­sem­bled at the en­trance seek­ing to ac­cess their re­spec­tive clin­ics.

Due to COVID-19 con­cerns on­ly a small num­ber of peo­ple was be­ing al­lowed in­to the build­ing at time, cre­at­ing a lev­el of frus­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the pa­tients who had ar­rived ear­ly.

Con­cerned about con­tract­ing the coro­n­avirus virus and dis­gust­ed by the sit­u­a­tion, some pa­tients de­cid­ed to step away from the crowd and hope that they even­tu­al­ly got through.

Some of the pa­tients came to get new ap­point­ments for their re­spec­tive clin­ics while oth­ers had ap­point­ments yes­ter­day.

One pa­tient was very up­set that there seemed to be no struc­tured sys­tem in place.

“The crowd was un­con­trol­lable, it could have been bet­ter. There was no so­cial dis­tanc­ing to­day at all. Peo­ple, who are sick, it so easy to catch any­thing so I de­cide to step back and al­low every­body to go ahead,” the pa­tient said.

Lament­ing that peo­ple were not fol­low­ing the so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines, he said, “They com­plain­ing about East­er week­end, this worst than East­er week­end, this worst than Car­ni­val, which is re­al­ly ridicu­lous. This coun­try is get­ting re­al­ly out of hand, that is why cas­es are in­creas­ing dai­ly and the in­no­cent peo­ple com­ing here that is why it hav­ing all the pan­ic.”

An­oth­er pa­tient said, “They ask­ing every­body to form a line and when they come out to col­lect the cards every­body just gath­er in a rush and no­body don’t want to move, so the rea­son why all these of­fi­cers have to come here.”

An­oth­er per­son said on­ly five peo­ple were be­ing al­lowed in­to build­ing at one time.

“It have dif­fer­ent ap­point­ment like nine o’ clock, 10 o’ clock and 11 o’ clock but every­body as­sem­ble and they want to go in one time.”

In a re­sponse the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty stat­ed the mat­ter was im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dressed via sup­ple­men­tal mea­sures and ex­pressed con­fi­dence their out- pa­tients will con­tin­ue to ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ed, con­sis­tent with the Block Ap­point­ment Sys­tem (BAS).

The au­thor­i­ty ex­plained that the BAS sched­ules pa­tients of spe­cial­i­ty clin­ics for face- to- face con­sul­ta­tion by the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, on a con­firmed date and time.

Re­mind­ing pa­tients to ar­rive 15 min­utes be­fore Block Ap­point­ments, the au­thor­i­ty stat­ed, “Ar­rival in ad­vance of ap­point­ment sched­ule, leads to over­crowd­ing and vi­o­la­tion of COVID-19 health pro­to­cols.”

The SWRHA al­so ad­vised that on­ly one rel­a­tive (if nec­es­sary) should ac­com­pa­ny the pa­tient.

Pa­tients who were un­sure of or re­quire in­for­ma­tion on clin­ic ap­point­ments were en­cour­aged to call the au­thor­i­ty’s toll free Cus­tomer Care Cen­tre at 87-SWRHA (877-9742).