Kevon Felmine

As the Min­istry of Health con­tin­ues to de­com­mis­sion the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem, it is mov­ing to­wards a hy­brid mod­el for hos­pi­tals to treat both COVID-19 pa­tients and those with oth­er med­ical con­di­tions.

Dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 up­date on Wednes­day, Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal will be the first to adopt this mod­el.

Deyals­ingh said it will fol­low the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal and serve as a tra­di­tion­al hos­pi­tal by the mid­dle to end of May.

The Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal stopped ad­mit­ting pa­tients last week Mon­day. At the time, there were 39 pa­tients and 20 yes­ter­day. The hos­pi­tal al­so has a unit for COVID-19 pa­tients with kid­ney dis­ease to un­der­go dial­y­sis, and Deyals­ingh says this will con­tin­ue. 

“That is go­ing to be a sort of test case for mov­ing the health sys­tem even­tu­al­ly to a hy­brid sys­tem rather than a par­al­lel sys­tem. The CMO and I met with of­fi­cials and all the staff, GM Nurs­ing, Chief of Staff and every­body at Ari­ma, I be­lieve, last week. All sys­tems are in place with sep­a­rate en­trances, ex­its and in­fec­tion and pro­tec­tion con­trol pro­to­cols to use Ari­ma as a hy­brid sys­tem as we move for­ward,” Deyals­ingh said. 

The min­istry will al­so re­turn the Tacarigua Rac­quet Cen­tre to the Min­istry of Sport by next week, so ten­nis play­ers and oth­ers can ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ty. A work crew is cur­rent­ly de­con­struct­ing par­ti­tions, re­mov­ing fix­tures and beds at the cen­tre.

The Debe Cam­pus will al­so be re­turned to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Both venues served as step-down fa­cil­i­ties for re­cov­er­ing COVID-19 pa­tients. How­ev­er, they were emp­ty for a while. 

Deyals­ingh said COVID-19 hos­pi­tals were now at 19 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, the low­est rate since April 2021. 

“This is our low­est oc­cu­pan­cy lev­el in about a year. The mes­sage that should come out loud and clear, and if you pay at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly, is that COVID-19 is not done with us. We must not as­sume that we are done with COVID-19. It is still there. There are many parts of the world that are still grap­pling with record num­bers of out­breaks.”

He boast­ed that T&T could ful­ly re­open its econ­o­my be­cause of good lead­er­ship.

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