THREE children who have contracted Covid-19 are severely ill and have been hospitalised,
Principal Medical Officer Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards said on Saturday at the prime minister’s press conference that there was an increase in children contracting the virus which was a new development.
She said, “There have been 49 additional cases inclusive of those three children over the last week and we have also noted that we have persons who are very ill requiring oxygen that are being admitted and spending anywhere between 12 and 21 days in our hospitals.”
Citing confidentiality, Dr Abdool-Richards said the children were being taken care of by the South West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) and that samples for genome sequencing have been sent to the University of the West Indies to check for the Delta variant.
In an update on the parallel healthcare system, Dr Abdool-Richards said admissions of new patients were higher than discharges.
She noted there were three times more high-dependency unit (HDU) and intensive care unit (ICU) patients than recovering patients.
The doctor said there was a 30% increase in the number of ambulance usage due to Covid-19 and an increase in the time taken on a task during the last week.
Dr Abdool-Richards and the Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh also urged parents to vaccinate their children as it is the best prevention method they can offer to protect them.
Deyalsingh said that children were getting vaccinated as early as one month old by paediatricians and when he was in school, parents did not need to give consent for a nurse to administer a vaccine to their child so there was no excuse not to get vaccinated.
He said, “Let’s not find every excuse in the book not to protect our children.”
