Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony has said the government is hoping to operationalise the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Ocean View by next week.
Anthony made the announcement yesterday during a COVID-19 update in which he said that works have been ongoing at the facility for over two to three weeks and the ministry was able to install oxygen lines and other necessary things.
“So that has now been completed, the oxygen banks and so forth are all in place and we are now moving in the beds that will be there for the ICU,” he added.
Anthony reiterated that there will be about 25 beds in the ICU with additional beds in the facility’s theatre and theatre recovery units there. “So in total we will have about 29 beds in that whole area that will now be the new ICU,” he noted.
He added that in setting up the facility’s ICU, some of the equipment currently at the Georgetown Hospital’s Infectious Diseases ICU will be moved across to the Ocean View facility.
“We will still maintain a minimum presence at Georgetown Hospital but the idea is to move everything across to Ocean View,” he said, while adding that the equipment that is transferred will be complemented by new equipment that the ministry recently bought, which includes ventilators. He said those are now being installed.
With the move, he added, the Georgetown Hospital will be returned to a bit of normalcy and will be able to deal with more patients at that hospital.
“I think that they have been restricting patients because COVID-19 had taken up quite a number of bed space so by decanting these patients over to Ocean View we will now be able to take in more of the regular patients at Georgetown Hospital,” he remarked.
In relation to having the new ICU facility staffed, Anthony stated that those staff members who are currently operating at the Georgetown Hospital’s COVID-19 ICU will be transferred to Ocean View along with a number of other persons who were recently brought on. As a result, the minister added that his ministry will also embark on continuous training of healthcare staff.
“We’re also looking at training people continuously and there would be a number of training sessions that are coming up inclusive of training that will be done by the US government. We expect a team to be in here in a week or so and they would be doing training,” he said, while adding that that training will be done at a number of regional hospitals and they will also be doing training sessions with doctors at the Georgetown Hospital.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines of a ceremony on Thursday, when the minister was asked about other issues as it relates to the Ocean View property and ownership of the land, he said that those matters are in the hands of the Attorney General, while his focus as Minister of Health is putting the facility to use.
He mentioned that there are about 20 COVID-19 patients currently at the facility and they largely comprise persons with mild symptoms.
