sto­ries by Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem set up to deal with the COVId-19 pan­dem­ic, Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said yes­ter­day. 

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, Deyals­ingh said he was sched­uled to have a meet­ing with min­istry of­fi­cials lat­er in the day, among them Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, to dis­cuss the mat­ter, not­ing that one of the ma­jor goals of the re­view of the sys­tem would be whether one of the fa­cil­i­ties cur­rent­ly be­ing used for COVID treat­ment need­ed to be re­moved.

“She (Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer In­sti­tu­tions Dr Maryam Ab­dool Richards) is meet­ing and al­so our Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit is meet­ing with me at 1.30, to­geth­er with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and the Chief Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer, to do a to­tal re­view of our par­al­lel health­care sys­tems in terms of ca­pac­i­ty in case we have to take Home of Foot­ball out of the grid,” he said.

Deyals­ingh said there are al­so plans to re­move the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal from the par­al­lel health­care sys­tem and op­er­a­tionalise it for nor­mal care to North East Trinidad once COVID-19 cas­es re­main low.

“The Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, where we are keep­ing our sus­pect cas­es, is gross­ly un­der­utilised. You have about five or ten per­sons there on any one day in a 100-bed fa­cil­i­ty,” Deyals­ingh said. 

“We have a plan, once the num­bers hold, that by Feb­ru­ary, once we get over the Christ­mas spike which we ex­pect, the old year’s spike, if we con­duct our­selves prop­er­ly over this vir­tu­al car­ni­val pe­ri­od, the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal can be tak­en of­fline and be re­turned to the peo­ple of Ari­ma for its orig­i­nal pur­pose.”

Deyals­ingh said an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty could eas­i­ly fill the role which the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal is cur­rent­ly be­ing used for. 

“What we are think­ing about do­ing is sus­pect cas­es would find a home at the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal - again which is un­der­utilised. We are pay­ing a vis­it to the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal next week Tues­day to see if phys­i­cal­ly and lo­gis­ti­cal­ly that can hap­pen,” he said.