It has been one year since the first set of persons were treated at the country’s Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal and the Minister of Health has stated that expansion plans may have to be put in place if Guyana’s COVID-19 cases continue to rise.
This was disclosed by Dr Frank Anthony yesterday during a press conference which was held at the facility at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara, which was converted last year from a hotel to a hospital.
The minister during the press conference commended the staff of the facility and those from the Georgetown Public Hospital and his ministry who all worked hard to get the facility to where it is currently, as over 2,000 persons have been treated there since it has been operationalised.
“As of yesterday we would have seen 2,336 patients in this facility and of those 2,336, we have had 2,001 persons who recovered and went home. Unfortunately like with every facility you would see deaths and we have had in our ICU, 281 of our patients… who died,” Anthony informed, adding that in total, 335 persons died while being cared for at the facility.
While presenting these numbers, Anthony was questioned about the breakdown of vaccinated versus unvaccinated patients. He stated that the majority of persons who have been hospitalised are unvaccinated and they have seen a few cases of persons in hospital who have been partially inoculated meaning they have only received one dose.
He added that while they have had a few persons who have been fully inoculated being infected, those were persons who presented with a number of comorbidities and other illnesses. He stated that there have been only two persons who have been fully vaccinated who have died.
Anthony said, “We had two cases where persons passed away but they have had both doses, they have had several comorbidities, in both cases they have had more than one illness so the prognosis outside of the vaccine, the prognosis would have been bad to begin with and you can’t say it’s the vaccine or anything of the sort, it’s just the condition the persons had, they were extremely sick.”
As it is currently, the minister stated that the facility has the capacity to house 40 patients at the intensive care unit and they are working to expand to ensure that the facility can accommodate more persons if necessary. During a recently held meeting, it was disclosed that while the facility can accommodate around 204 patients, they may need to look at other contingency plans to add capacity.
He told the conference, “We started looking at the possibility that if we have to house more patients what other contingencies we can put in place and so when we examine those possibilities we think that we can add another 50 beds to the existing facility if we need to hospitalise more people.”
As the virus has mutated over time, he mentioned that Guyana has seen a surge in cases recently and added that the country is currently in its third wave of the pandemic. He reiterated that there has been an increase in hospitalisations recently which he said can be attributed to the possibility that the Delta variant of the virus is here.
With the possibility for expansion of the facility, he stated that they can also put in place the field hospital which came here as a donation from Qatar. Adding this field facility could increase capacity by about 60 persons.
Third wave and supplies
“I think we’re in the third wave [and] we feel that this one is being propelled by the Delta variant, [so] we are unfortunately going to see more cases, more hospitalisations,” Anthony posited, while adding that if the increase continues, the country’s facilities that are treating COVID-19 patients will require additional supplies like oxygen.
As it relates to the supply of oxygen at the Ocean View facility, when Stabroek News asked the minister if the country has had any issue with the supply of oxygen for COVID-19 patients, he responded that there have been no issues.
The minister stated that recently, a consultant from the Pan American Health Organisation visited all the hospitals and assessed their oxygen capabilities and how they can be improved. To this end all the regional hospitals are currently preparing to add more oxygen capacity.
“At this facility when we started out we were using oxygen tanks, we have moved from using tanks to now having bulk storage and with that bulk storage the people from the oxygen plant come here every 24 hours to replenish that,” Anthony pointed out .
He added that sometimes one patient would require 15 litres and in more severe cases even up to 30 litres of oxygen per minute and as such if there is a surge in hospitalisations as a result of the novel coronavirus, there will be an increase in the demand for oxygen at the various facilities.
“If cases go up too quickly we can run out of oxygen as we have seen in other countries… We’re not there yet, we have adequate oxygen, systems are working and we are looking at scenarios and what we need to do to get more oxygen,” he assured.
In this regard he mentioned that they have already started speaking with manufacturers about the possibility of increasing supply and have plotted various scenarios on how to respond in those instances.
Treatment protocols
Meanwhile, with regard to the current treatment protocols for COVID-19, Dr Tracey Bovell, the doctor in charge at the Liliendaal facility noted that the current protocols follow international standards.
Dr Bovell informed that patients at the facility are being treated according to the signs and symptoms that they present even as she mentioned that remdesivir is still being used along with other drugs like dexamethasone.
“The thing about COVID-19 is that COVID-19 does not come with COVID-19 alone most of the times… we have patients with comorbidities so we are treating the persons according to how they present,” she explained. She added that there may be some patients who come with uncontrolled diabetes coupled with COVID-19 and therefore their treatment may vary from other individuals who may present with other symptoms or comorbidities.
When asked if convalescent plasma is still being used as part of the treatment here, Dr Bovell responded that while this intervention was used initially, they have not seen any significant change or improvement that would indicate that convalescent plasma is the way to go.
“More studies are pointing more away from not using convalescent plasma and this is not just studies in Guyana this is international studies and produced by PAHO/WHO,” Dr Bovell added.
