South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) CEO, Dr Bri­an Ar­mour says out­pa­tient clin­ics con­tin­ue de­spite mem­bers be­ing turned away on Mon­day morn­ing.

Scores of out­pa­tients of urol­o­gy and car­diac clin­ics were barred en­try in­to the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal along Chancery Lane. When they tried to en­ter the build­ing, they met se­cu­ri­ty guards wear­ing gloves and masks, who in­formed them that the clin­ics were closed.

It was ei­ther they wait four hours to be at­tend­ed to or re­turn home and wait for a phone call.

But in a re­sponse yes­ter­day, Ar­mour told Guardian Me­dia that the SWRHA was im­ple­ment­ing crowd con­trol as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure against the spread of COVID-19. Ar­mour apol­o­gised for the in­con­ve­nience, say­ing that the de­ci­sion was on­ly tak­en on Sun­day night.

“Our out­pa­tient clin­ics were not sus­pend­ed or can­celled. We were try­ing to pre­vent per­sons from over­crowd­ing. As you know, the hos­pi­tal is now in emer­gency mode and like the two oth­er RHA that put out re­leas­es, we are mind­ful of the spread of this virus.

“Be­ing the first busi­ness day of the week, we de­cid­ed last night to lim­it the num­ber of per­sons con­gre­gat­ing at the hos­pi­tal. We know this would have cre­at­ed an in­con­ve­nience and we apol­o­gise but we need to ex­er­cise crowd con­trol. That is why we had the se­cu­ri­ty and nurs­es there,” Ar­mour said.

Go­ing for­ward, non-ur­gent cas­es will be is­sued re­peat pre­scrip­tions and ap­point­ments will be resched­uled. Se­lect­ed ur­gent cas­es may be seen at clin­ics while pa­tients with pre­scrip­tions to be filled, will on­ly be al­lowed in­to the build­ing in small groups.

Clin­ics at Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ties and health cen­tres con­tin­ue un­til fur­ther no­tice. 

The lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion caused anger among out­pa­tients yes­ter­day as they gath­ered from around 7 am.

Some pa­tients who had tests and scans were al­lowed to go in­side while vis­i­tors were told to get pass­es at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

One pa­tient Toolsie Gan­ga said: “They take your card and they’re telling you that they have it here. We can ei­ther wait four hours or go home and wait for them to call us. That is not mak­ing sense at all.”

For many out­pa­tients, while they un­der­stood that pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures were need­ed to com­bat the spread of COVID-19, they said prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion could have been pre­vent­ed the is­sue.

“They’re tak­ing pre­cau­tions and we un­der­stand that but I think this sit­u­a­tion could have been han­dled dif­fer­ent­ly. When you give them your card, they have to go back in­to the sys­tem to check.

“They could have checked the sys­tem and called us be­fore or the Min­is­ter (of Health) could have made a pub­lic an­nounce­ment that the clin­ics would be closed. They’re telling you don’t min­gle with crowds but when you do that, every­one is crowd­ing here this morn­ing,” an­oth­er pa­tient said.