TEN children have been hospitalised for Covid-19 with one child was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and another into the High Dependency Unit (HDU).
This is according to the Principal Medical Officer Dr Maryam Abdool-Richards at the Prime Minister’s press conference on Saturday.
She said, “We’ve been noticing a trend of an increasing number of children being hospitalised and admitted for management of Covid-19.”
Dr Abdool-Richards said that this trend was causing a great level of concern for all members on the health team.
The children who were Covid-19 positive and hospitalised had their samples sent to the University of the West Indies for genetic sequencing for possible identification of the Delta variant, she said.
Dr Abdool-Richards also said that there were 394 patients hospitalised across 16 facilities in the parallel healthcare system as at 8am on Saturday with 292 in hospitals and 102 in the step down facilities.
She said that there were less patients being admitted into the parallel healthcare system while discharges remained consistent.
Displaying a graph, she noted that net admissions were lower than it has been over the last seven-to-eight weeks with 56 persons being admitted in the most recent week compared to 127 persons being admitted in the last two weeks.
Dr Abdool-Richards said that the overall occupancy of the parallel healthcare system continued to be around 40% with four of ten beds occupied in either island currently.
Six out of seven hospitals were under 75% occupancy with the Augustus Long hospital reaching 79% occupancy.
Dr Abdool-Richards also said that the wards were at 37% occupancy, the HDU at 34%, and the ICU at 76% occupancy.
The accident and emergency department also saw low numbers of persons in need of transfers to the parallel healthcare system and the overall ambulance usage for persons affected with Covid-19 was 25% at present.
Thoracic Medical Director at the Caura Hospital, Dr Michelle Trotman also said that a recurring trend among people who were Covid-19 positive was that they were unaware that they had an underlying comorbidity which included obesity.
Dr Trotman also pleaded to the population to get vaccinated for all those eligible to receive it.
