By Chantalé Fletcher
THE gap between discharges and admissions continues to be narrow which indicates a decreased burden on the parallel healthcare system.
This was revealed by Principal Medical Officer, Institutions, Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards at the Ministry of Health virtual presser on Monday.
Dr Abdool-Richards said, “Over the last three weeks, we have seen less additional persons admitted into the system which was a good indicator as it indicates a decreased burden on the system.”
But she said there has been a variable increase in net admissions over the past five weeks.
Dr Abdool-Richards said, “The net admissions represent the difference between admission of patients and those leaving the system or discharges.
“We have recognised that as of today, the net admissions are 25 and so, we have a six-day period to look at the overall impact of net admission for this week.”
Dr Abdool-Richards added that net admissions were dependent on how quickly patients were admitted and discharged but also based on the severity of person entering the parallel healthcare system.
She said that across the nine Covid-19 hospitals, there were 279 patients with 73 at step-down facilities.
Dr Abdool-Richards said, “A three to one ratio continues to be a consistent trend, in addition, we noted that three times as many patients are severely and critically ill as opposed to recovering patients.”
She added that this emphasised the need for Covid-19 prevention through vaccination.
The PMO said that Covid-19 patients could become severely and critically ill and require Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and High Dependency Unit (HDU) care.
Dr Abdool-Richards said, “As of today (Monday), the total overall occupancy was 34%. We have been noticing a slow but consistent decline in the overall occupancy which has been under 40% since July 15.”
However, she warned that this trend could be easily reversed and the public should not be pre-maturely comforted by the low occupancies.
Abdool-Richards added that a consistent trend was noted in the percentage occupancy, where the Augustus Long Hospital remained above the caution threshold of 75% while all seven step-down facilities in Trinidad and Tobago were under 75%.
She said that ward occupancy was at 32% whereby three out of ten Covid-19 beds across T&T were currently occupied.
However, ICU was currently at 66% but explained that although this may be a decrease, the overall average ICU occupancy for most ill patients over the last month was 80%.
In addition, the HDU occupancy remained at 38% with an average of the last month thus far of 57%.
Dr Abdool-Richards that these were indicators that persons with Covid-19 may develop severe symptoms and will require ICU and HDU treatment.
