By Sue-Ann Wayow
IT’S difficult to effectively manage and monitor the 14,000 Covid-19 positive persons who are isolated at homes and the Ministry of Health is seeking to hire help.
This was stated by Chief Medical Officer Dr Roshan Parasram on Wednesday at the Ministry of Health’s virtual Covid-19 update.
Dr Parasram admitted there was not enough staffing to deal with the thousands of patients seeking care at home.
As at Tuesday, there were 14, 338 persons in home self-isolation.
Dr Parasram said, “This is the largest number of cases we would have had in terms of active spread at any one time. The same eight county medical officers of health have that duty to monitor these individuals on a daily basis and one person in Tobago. The numbers are really quite large in terms of what they have to monitor.”
He continued, “It would mean that they would really have to call 14,000 people every day. Most of these offices just have five or four persons responsible for this activity. The capacity is very limited in terms of being able to do that activity.”
The Ministry of Health was attempting to get more staff in place to assist with the backlog with priority being given to the elderly and persons with comorbidities to ensure active monitoring on those groups.
Dr Parasram is also asking the population to assist by contacting 811 if their conditions worsen or by visiting the accident and emergency departments as quickly as they can.
