Cornwall’s COVID ward overflows
Published:Friday | February 19, 2021 | 12:16 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
Western Bureau:
The Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Montego Bay, St James, has exhausted the 25 beds initially allocated to treat COVID-19 patients and has been scrambling to find additional space amid a continuing rise in virus cases.
Clinical Coordinator Dr Delroy Fray said that the Mount Salem-based hospital has had to create extra spaces on the 10-storey hospital’s seventh and ninth floors, doubling the capacity to 58, as admissions continue to climb.
“We have a ward dedicated to just COVID. It has a capacity of 25 and we are hosting 29 there now,” Fray said yesterday during a joint Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Ministry of Health and Wellness virtual COVID-19 forum. “And as you know, we have a high-dependency unit that can deal with critical cases that can house four [patients], which is like an intensive care unit.”
Fray said that although the Type A hospital – the only one of such designation in western Jamaica – was preparing for the pandemic, the rapid increase in positive cases has thrown it into a tailspin.
“This truth is that the numbers are increasing, so our admission rates are increasing. [Thursday] morning I checked with nursing and we are somewhere at 58 [spaces] now,” said Fray, pointing out the expansion to two additional floors of the hospital, which is still undergoing major rehabilitation as its seeks to rebound from 2017 noxious fumes issue.
At at Wednesday, St James had recorded 2,168 of the island’s 20,310 positive cases of the coronavirus, with 378 being active. Nationally, there were 6,939 confirmed active cases of the virus, which has claimed at least 384 lives since last March.
Across the country, some 256 bed spaces are being used up by COVID-19 patients, 22 of whom are critically ill.
Compounding the problem at the CRH, Fray said, was that the institution also has a number of social patients – persons who have recovered from various conditions and have been discharged, but have been abandoned by relatives – occupying critical bed spaces.
“We have 16 social patients that don’t need to be in the hospital and we need to get those patients out,” the clinical coordinator stressed, as he appealed to relatives to pick up their loved ones.
“That’s a bigger issue. We are creating 16 more spaces and yet we have 16 patients in the hospital who don’t need to be there.”
Fray said that the hospital’s management will continue to strategise to find more spaces.