KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

When 86-year-old May John­son turned up at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on March 7, doc­tors found that she had stroke symp­toms.

Two weeks lat­er, her fam­i­ly can­not see her as med­ical staff says she is in quar­an­tine at the fa­cil­i­ty af­ter sec­ondary con­tact with a COVID-19 case.
John­son’s fam­i­ly showed up at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, hop­ing to get some an­swers about her med­ical con­di­tion.

 Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, John­son’s son, Fran­cis John­son, said she fell ill at her home in St Mary’s Vil­lage, Moru­ga, so they took her to the Princes Town Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

They thought she fell sick be­cause she suf­fers from hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes. A doc­tor or­dered her trans­fer to the hos­pi­tal be­cause of her con­di­tion. Af­ter a scan showed symp­toms of a stroke, he said medics in­sert­ed a na­so­gas­tric tube in­to her lungs in­stead of her stom­ach, re­sult­ing in breath­ing prob­lems.
“To this day, we are hav­ing an is­sue where she is iso­lat­ed. They are say­ing that she is in quar­an­tine. The CMO’s of­fice called on the 15th and gave up this in­for­ma­tion that she had a sec­ond-hand trans­mis­sion with a COVID-19 pa­tient. We are not get­ting any oth­er in­for­ma­tion. We saw the nurs­es wear­ing full PPE to en­ter the room she is in to give her cloth­ing we brought,” Fran­cis said.
He said even the nurs­es were con­cerned when they learned what hap­pened. Not­ing that stud­ies show that el­der­ly COVID-19 pa­tients with co­mor­bidi­ties are more sus­cep­ti­ble to this ill­ness, Fran­cis said the hos­pi­tal has not even test­ed his moth­er.
“We asked the doc­tor if they would test, but he said that it was not nec­es­sary. We are try­ing to fig­ure out what he means by that be­cause she had sec­ond-hand con­tact with some­one. Every­one who was around the area should get test­ed to rule out COVID-19.” 
Giv­en that el­der­ly COVID-19 pa­tients with chron­ic dis­eases are more like­ly to be ad­mit­ted to the ICU with a high­er mor­tal­i­ty rate, he ques­tions why his moth­er was even at the hos­pi­tal in­stead of a COVID-19 fa­cil­i­ty.
He claimed the hos­pi­tal was neg­li­gent in ex­pos­ing his moth­er to the virus, es­pe­cial­ly as John­son is an am­putee who can­not walk. He said screen­ing mech­a­nisms should be in place to en­sure any­one with symp­toms of COVID-19 do not share the same space as oth­er pa­tients.
Guardian Me­dia reached out to the SWRHA and was await­ing a re­sponse up to press time.