Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed an out­break of COVID-19 at the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer, In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards said that there are cur­rent­ly 20 con­firmed cas­es at the fa­cil­i­ty.

“Those pa­tients are be­ing iso­lat­ed and man­aged in a sim­i­lar man­ner to per­sons who are re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for ex­am­ple at the Cou­va Med­ical and mul­ti train­ing fa­cil­i­ty. If they de­te­ri­o­rate and re­quire a high­er lev­el of care then the nor­mal Min­istry of Health pro­to­cols will be ap­plied,” Ab­dool-Richards said.

De­spite that con­fir­ma­tion, Ab­dool-Richards said that while the par­al­lel health sys­tem is strained, it has not yet col­lapsed.

She gave the in­for­ma­tion at yes­ter­day’s Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date.

Ab­dool-Richards said an­oth­er 10 beds have been added to the step-down fa­cil­i­ty at the UTT Val­sayn cam­pus, in­creas­ing its ca­pac­i­ty from 40 to 50 beds. She said the min­istry was al­so adding an­oth­er 10 beds to bring the to­tal to 60.

These ad­di­tion­al beds in step-down fa­cil­i­ties mean that health­i­er pa­tients will free up bed space for more acute­ly ill pa­tients to be man­aged by the par­al­lel health care sys­tem. How­ev­er, the same prob­lem per­sists, which is, as soon as beds are added, they are filled.

Ab­dool-Richards yes­ter­day said t the dai­ly rolling av­er­age in­creased again and now stands at 414.

“That is the num­ber of con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19 on a dai­ly ba­sis. This is im­por­tant to note be­cause the greater the num­ber of con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19, the greater the num­ber of per­sons who re­quire med­ical care at hos­pi­tals in the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem.”

Ab­dool-Richard said there was still a widen­ing gap be­tween ad­mis­sions and dis­charges, which put a strain on the sys­tem.

“It’s im­por­tant to note this in­creas­ing trend. The num­ber of con­firmed cas­es that re­quire ad­mis­sion in a hos­pi­tal is in the vicin­i­ty of 18 per 100, while we have a dis­charge rate of sev­en per one hun­dred,” she said.

“This means that every 100 cas­es that have been con­firmed, 11 per­sons are re­quired to go to a hos­pi­tal and stay there. That means on av­er­age we are see­ing an ap­prox­i­mate num­ber of 40 ad­di­tion­al pa­tients per day,” Ab­dool-Richards said.

The over­all ward oc­cu­pan­cy con­tin­ues to in­crease and stands at 75 per cent as of yes­ter­day morn­ing. The cur­rent ward oc­cu­pan­cy in Trinidad alone stands at 67 per cent.

The HDU’s are at max­i­mum ca­pac­i­ty and Ab­dool-Richards said that while they con­tin­ue to try to con­vert beds and add staff, the re­sources have “start­ed to run out”.

The ICU ca­pac­i­ty, she said, is at 100 per cent.

Ab­dool-Richards said the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal is at 86 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy and the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal stood at 92 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. The Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal was 77 per cent oc­cu­pied, the St Ann’s fa­cil­i­ty is at 100 per cent, while the Cou­va Med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, which hous­es the most crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients is cur­rent­ly at 70 per cent.

Things are not much bet­ter at the step-down fa­cil­i­ties even with the re­cent­ly added beds.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the beds in the med­ical tents come with some of the HDU and ICU sup­port­ed re­quire­ments.

“But cer­tain parts of it has to be brought in, which is avail­able in the coun­try,” he said.

Paras­ram said the fi­nal out­fit­ting of the tents would be com­plet­ed by Wednes­day, giv­ing a few ad­di­tion­al beds to ICU and HDU.