Plans are un­der con­sid­er­a­tion at the Min­istry of Health lev­el to re­move the Cou­va Med­ical and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty (CMMF) from the coun­try’s net­work of COVID-19 treat­ment fa­cil­i­ties, the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.

Doc­tors with­in the fa­cil­i­ty told Guardian Me­dia they un­der­stand the min­istry makes the de­ci­sion, the move is an­tic­i­pat­ed to oc­cur around De­cem­ber, fol­low­ing which, they will be trans­ferred to oth­er fa­cil­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the Min­istry of Health’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions head and the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Davlin Thomas, for fur­ther de­tails. No re­spons­es were forth­com­ing up to press time.

How­ev­er, a se­nior of­fi­cial of the hos­pi­tal told Guardian Me­dia they were aware that such a plan is be­ing de­lib­er­at­ed and an­tic­i­pat­ed it will be done at the end of the year and be ex­e­cut­ed by Jan­u­ary 2023.

The par­al­lel health­care sys­tem has been one of the coun­try’s biggest weapons in the COVID-19 fight and the re­moval of hos­pi­tals from the net­work isn’t a new phe­nom­e­non.

As min­istry of­fi­cials pre­vi­ous­ly ex­plained, sev­er­al times pri­or, fa­cil­i­ties are added or re­moved to meet the de­mand for space. One of the prime ex­am­ples of a fa­cil­i­ty be­ing back and forth in the net­work is the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The new Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal was al­so tak­en out of the sys­tem in March 2022.

Step-down/ tran­si­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties have al­so had their in and outs with the sys­tem.

At the peak of the pan­dem­ic, the en­tire sys­tem could ac­com­mo­date some­where in the vicin­i­ty of 1,000 pa­tients. How­ev­er, as of last week’s COVID-19 up­date, there are just 111 peo­ple ward­ed in the en­tire net­work of hos­pi­tals and step-down fa­cil­i­ties, 39 of whom are in the CMMF.

Oth­er than the CMMF, there are pa­tients be­ing treat­ed at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal, Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal, Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal.

While the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal was the first ded­i­cat­ed COVID-19 treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty in 2020, the CMMF was the main treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty, be­com­ing al­most syn­ony­mous with the pan­dem­ic and its pa­tients.