By Sue-Ann Wayow
COVID-19 patients are complying with the advice frequently given by health officials to access hospital care early and that could be a contributing factor to the recent decrease in hospitalisation rates.
Principal Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards said there was no one variable for the decrease that has been occurring over the past 53 days.
She was speaking during the Ministry of Health’s virtual Covid-19 update on Saturday.
The PMO saw that the ministry was now reporting the lowest hospital rates since last year October as well as the lowest Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the Accident and Emergency rates.
Dr Abdool-Richards had said at previous press conferences that one of the main reasons for the increased death rate and persons seeking care in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the High Dependency Unit (HDU) was that patients were accessing care when it was too late with some even refusing to go to the hospitals until it became absolutely unnecessary.
On Saturday she said, “There are a couple of variables that are involved in the decrease in the number of persons at the Accident and Emergency and the decrease in the ICU and HDU numbers. Firstly, we now have the Omicron as the established variant in our population as compared to the Delta variant. We also have an increase in vaccination uptake but more importantly, the Omicron variant globally has been noted to be less virulent but much more highly transmissible.”
Persons would still contract the virus and this would be reflective in the high number of daily Covid-19 positive cases she said.
“But, they are less likely to become ill and require medical attention,” Dr Abdool-Richards said.
She said, “Secondly, we have noticed that persons have been coming in at an earlier time to the Accident and Emergency. We have not been receiving many complaints from our physicians and this is a good sign. It shows that there has been some compliance to the recommendations that we would have been putting forth.”
Dr Abdool-Richards also gave an updated figure regarding the number of children in hospital battling Covid-19 which as of Saturday was three.
Wear masks when partying
The PMO continued to advise persons to follow all health and safety protocols especially the wearing of the mask when attending restaurants, theatres, bars and more recently Carnival events at designated safe zones.
She advised that the mask still be kept on as much as possible except when eating or drinking.
Referring to foreigners patronising safe zones and identification, Dr Abdool-Richards said, “It is acceptable for them to have electronic forms of their passport page with the bio-data information.”
And she also said that the mass vaccination sites continued to be monitored and if necessary changes have to be made such as either closure or merger, the relevant action will be taken.
