The Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment has es­tab­lished three sep­a­rate iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ties to house pos­i­tive COVID-19 pa­tients in To­ba­go.

Dur­ing a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty on Fri­day, the di­vi­sion said the de­ci­sion was made be­cause it was ac­count­able for the ef­fec­tive man­age­ment and ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of high-qual­i­ty ser­vice to the To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Med­ical Chief of Staff Dr Vic­tor Wheel­er said while two of the three iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ties were lo­cat­ed on the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal com­pound, COVID-19 pa­tients would not have to min­gle with oth­er pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal.

Wheel­er said the sys­tem of iden­ti­fy­ing per­sons with flu-like symp­toms would start at a spe­cial, tent­ed, triage area, which was set up by the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA), lo­cat­ed out­side the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment. How­ev­er, he not­ed that the sys­tem is re­ly­ing on in­di­vid­u­als to be hon­est about their symp­toms

“Any­one with a cough or cold will go here for that as­sess­ment. Tem­per­a­ture check, blood pres­sure, vi­tal signs done and there’s a screen­ing that we will do for sus­pect­ed COVID and if you are sus­pect­ed of COVID and you are well you would be swabbed and ad­vised to self-iso­late. If their fa­cil­i­ties is such that they can’t self-iso­late, we have fa­cil­i­ties where we would take them to and we will pro­vide trans­port for them,” Wheel­er said.

An In­ten­sive Care Unit ded­i­cat­ed to COVID-19 pos­i­tive pa­tients has al­so been set up. The build­ing, al­so on the SGH com­pound, was for­mal­ly used for MRI ex­am­i­na­tions but was re­fur­bished as a ster­ilised fa­cil­i­ty due to the coro­n­avirus cri­sis.

Wheel­er said the area will be used for pa­tients who need ven­ti­la­tion and in­tu­ba­tion. The cu­bi­cle used for in­tu­ba­tion is neg­a­tive­ly pres­surised with an air-con­di­tion­ing sys­tem. The space can ac­com­mo­date up to five ICU pa­tients with ven­ti­la­tors in ex­ten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances, but due to so­cial dis­tanc­ing, on­ly three beds will be al­lowed.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre, a fa­cil­i­ty for re­cov­er­ing ad­dicts at the old Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal at Fort King George, has been re-pur­posed to house COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es who are well. Wheel­er said the ten-bed quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty is prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed for nat­ur­al air­ing and has all ameni­ties in­clud­ing en­ter­tain­ment and se­cu­ri­ty on the com­pound

“The in­ten­tion is there would be some per­sons who would be swabbed, well, and who don’t need hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, but who still need to be mon­i­tored, this is where we would have iden­ti­fied. We have staff who would be do­ing dai­ly tem­per­a­ture checks and vi­tal signs and if they be­come symp­to­matic and need ad­mis­sion, they would go to the cur­rent treat­ment cen­tre at the hos­pi­tal, pend­ing trans­fer and trans­port to Trinidad,” he said.

He said oth­er ar­eas of the old Scar­bor­ough Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal are cur­rent­ly be­ing re­fur­bished for de­vel­op­ing ad­di­tion­al iso­la­tion or quar­an­tine spaces. See Page 6