THERE is a continued a high ratio of Covid-19 patients admitted versus patients discharged within the parallel healthcare system.
This according to Principal Medical Officer of Institutions Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards who spoke at the Ministry of Health’s virtual media conference on Saturday.
“Admissions and discharges are based on the clinical severity or how sick the patients are,” she said.
Dr Abdool-Richards said, “There is a similar number of 124 patients of this week compared to 127 patients last week. We also looked at the number of patients within the parallel healthcare system as a trend.
“In the nine hospitals across the parallel healthcare system there have been 307 patients to date. It is important to note that there are three children out of that 307 in hospitals.”
She said, “In the stepdown facilities there are 107 patients giving a total of 410 patients and we continue to see a pattern of three-to-one hospital stepdown facilities indicating that there are more in and sick patients then recovering patients.”
The PMO stated that the overall percentage occupancy was currently at 40% meaning that four of ten beds were filled.
She said this has been a consistent trend since July 15 with the exception of two days when the occupancy increased marginally to 42%.
Dr Abdool Richards said, “Six out of seven hospitals are being under the critical threshold of 75%. There is only one hospital in Trinidad and Tobago that is 76% this morning (Saturday) which is the Augustus Long Hospital.”
She added there was also 37% occupancy at ward levels as at Saturday morning.
Dr Abdool- Richards said the Intensive Care Unit ( ICU ) was filled up to 80% on while the High Dependency Unit (HDU) at 48%.
