THE Ministry of Health’s Covid-19 update states that 11 patients are at the Caura Hospital.
But Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh pointed out that by the end of the day on Saturday 13 persons will be at the institution.
He made this statement during the ministry’s virtual media conference on Saturday.
The total number of infections in Trinidad and Tobago, as indicated by the ministry was at 147 according to its Saturday morning update.
Deyalsingh said, “At Caura, by the end of the day, we will have about 13 persons there. That is 13 out of 100 so Caura at the end of the day, would just be 13 % occupied so we have a lot of space there.”
He added, “At Couva, we have waiting, in case we get an upsurge in cases, 175 beds available, so between Couva 175 beds and Caura 100, a total of 13 out of 275 beds are in use which is just below 5%.
“So the capacity we have kept in reserve knowing that we could always expect the virus to manifest itself in the parallel healthcare system is in place to treat with any upsurge of local Covid cases. Additionally, the normal healthcare services delivery goes on unabated. We don’t have to disrupt normal operations in any of the hospitals.”
With five new cases confirmed in the last few days, the Minister said, “Some of the measures we want to implement from today, the health regulations, we are going to once again strictly enforce the one visitor per patient rule, it is not one visitor at a time, and visiting hours are still restricted to one hour per day.”
As it relates to homes for the elderly, he said, “We had started about two weeks ago to relax the visitation policy where we were starting to allow visitation.”
Deyalsingh said, “Unfortunately we have had to revise that and as of today, we are going to go back to the measures where in these homes we are asking that no visitors be allowed. This is to protect the most vulnerable group, that is, the elderly, immuno-compromised, those who are bedridden, those with STDs.”
