Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon yesterday revealed that financial arrangements are still being worked out for works progressing to transform the former Ocean View Hotel into a hospital for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients.
This disclosure was made during a press conference hosted by Harmon yesterday at the Civil Defence Commission (CDC) headquarters.
It was recently announced that the former hotel, located at Liliendaal along the Rupert Craig Highway, was chosen as the site to be transformed into a specialised COVID-19 hospital. However, following that announcement, no word was given as to whether the building was leased or bought.
Harmon, when asked yesterday, stated that he could not say what the overall cost for rehabilitation works to the structure is but added that the owners of the building allowed for works to be carried out even before any formal contracts were signed. “The financial arrangements are still being worked out but because it is a matter of national urgency I think that facility was made available to the Ministry of Public Health,” Harmon said, while noting that he believes that upon its completion, the facility will be the first dedicated COVID-19 hospital in the Caribbean.
While noting that the facility will be set up for the “long term”, he indicated that “going forward we may not have pandemics, we may have epidemics and so on but going forward that is going to be a facility for this purpose”.
Following questions about the safety of the structure and its potential vulnerability to overtopping of the sea defence, Harmon stated that he believed that works are also ongoing in the sea defence area just beyond the structure. He added that he could not recall any recent overtopping of the defence that affected that structure. “I think that at the end of it, in a very short space of time, we will have an A-1 facility where we can be able to say to the world that this is what we are doing for Guyanese who are affected by this COVID virus,” Harmon said.
