Since the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) launched the country’s first and only COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit, a total of 56 patients have passed through that unit.
This was disclosed to Stabroek News by GPHC’s Communications Manager, Chelauna Providence, who stated that since Guyana’s COVID-19 ICU was opened in late March following the initial outbreak, a total of 56 patients have been attended to at the unit to date.
Providence related that currently, the hospital is handling COVID-19 cases quite well as there is still no shortage of staff for any of the units that house suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases while there is
continuous training being done in different areas for staff who are now coming on to work in COVID-19 specific areas.
Further, she mentioned that there is an adequate supply of personal protective equipment as they have recently received a donation of a substantial amount of protective gear from the Rotary Club in Georgetown along with another donation from the United States Embassy. “We still are open to receiving additional donations… now that they have begun to relax the measures, we don’t know what the situation will look like in another week, another month, so we’re always happy to get more protective resources for the staff.”
Recently, a Transition Unit was opened at the hospital which deals specifically with COVID-19 patients who do not require intensive care but still require hospitalisation. “Once we have a patient who no longer requires intensive care but they haven’t tested negative twice to be cleared… they are placed on transition so that they can be monitored,” she informed. However, the unit also caters for persons who come to the hospital as suspected cases but have to wait for their positive test results; those patients are placed in that unit until their results are obtained.
The transition unit according to Providence is set to house approximately 50 patients. “We know that only a small percentage of the total amount of COVID-19 cases will be cases that require intensive care, so the transition unit is set up to provide other forms of care for COVID-19 positive patients and we anticipated that that unit will be much more occupied than our ICU,” she said, adding that provisions were made to ensure that there is a greater capacity at that unit.
