The par­al­lel health care sys­tem has run out of beds.

The med­ical teams han­dling the sev­en fa­cil­i­ties have been warn­ing about this for the past month, con­cerned that there would be no bed space for COVID-19 pos­i­tive and ill pa­tients.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer-In­sti­tu­tions, Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards on Sat­ur­day gave the dire news at the Min­istry of Health's up­date at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

"In our pre­vi­ous con­ver­sa­tions, we have been speak­ing about a ten days, a sev­en days and a five days to go be­fore the beds are all oc­cu­pied. It's no longer a five days, it has been touch and go for the last three to four day and all our beds are oc­cu­pied," she said.

"The in­creas­ing hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion lev­els, the in­creas­ing num­ber of beds re­al­ly is a cause of con­cern for all of us, at this rate we are out of hos­pi­tal beds."

For the first two weeks of May, there have been 107 deaths from COVID-19 and over 5,000 cas­es of in­fec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Health's evening up­date, 520 new cas­es were re­port­ed over the past 24 hours and 11 deaths.

Minister of Health, Terrence Deyalsingh MP.

Ab­dool-Richards said that the High De­pen­den­cy Unit beds are 95 per cent oc­cu­pied and all beds are filled in the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

Ab­dool-Richards said that the rolling av­er­age in terms of the num­ber of cas­es per day con­tin­ued to in­crease and was cur­rent­ly at 380 cas­es per day over the last sev­en days.

"And that re­al­ly rep­re­sents an in­creas­ing num­ber of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions at our sev­en hos­pi­tals in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem, all of which are, as of to­day, oc­cu­pied," she said.

"The num­bers of ad­mis­sions con­tin­ue to ex­ceed the num­ber of dis­charges. The hos­pi­tal has a net in­crease on a dai­ly av­er­age in terms of the num­ber of pa­tients."

Ab­dool-Richards said that there was an in­creas­ing up­ward trend in ad­mis­sions and while it was still a dy­nam­ic sit­u­a­tion that changes dai­ly, there has been an in­crease in the gap be­tween ad­mis­sions and dis­charges.

"Now as far as that widen­ing of the gap is con­cerned, this re­al­ly rep­re­sents an in­crease of be­tween 30 and 50 pa­tients on a dai­ly lev­el across each hos­pi­tal," she said.

She said in re­sponse to the climb­ing num­bers, the Min­istry of Health in­creased the num­ber of beds in the par­al­lel health care sys­tem by 130 and the 80 beds (210) in the two med­ical tents do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States.

"As fast as we in­crease these beds, they were filled," she said.

Even more wor­ri­some, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said that once those ad­di­tion­al 210 beds were filled, there was noth­ing else to be added.

"It is our hope that the surge ca­pac­i­ty pro­vid­ed by the 130 plus the 80 which is 210, will be more than suf­fi­cient to see us through. What we are hop­ing that with the pub­lic's be­hav­iour to stop gath­er­ing that the need, the de­mand for hos­pi­tal beds would go down," Deyals­ingh said.

He said that he hoped to "ral­ly out" the next two weeks.

"It is not an in­fi­nite sup­ply but right now we should be al­right," he said.