Manchester at ‘wits’ end’ in COVID crisis - Paediatric Ward to be repurposed for patient overflow

Tamara Bailey/Gleaner Writer

MANDEVILLE, Manchester:

The Mandeville Regional Hospital is scrambling to shuttle children out of its Paediatric Ward to create makeshift accommodation for coronavirus patients amid a swell of infections in the parish’s main hospital.

With the hospital’s 16-bed COVID-19 ward at full capacity and 34 of its staffers in quarantine, healthcare officials are seeking to prevent a total shutdown of the facility while scaling back many of its services.

The spike was framed by acting Medical Officer of Health Dr Shonette Blair Walters as a crisis, with the operation centre in the health department at “its wits’ end at this point in time”.

Regional director at the Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA), Michael Bent, said that 16 beds would be housed in the space vacated by paediatric patients, who will be relocated to another section of the hospital.

Authorities will seek to reroute patients who can be managed at other health facilities in the region. The alternatives include a 30-bed facility at the Kendal Camp and Conference Centre in Manchester and a 12-bed facility at Font Hill, St Elizabeth, for recovering patients who do not need hospitalisation.

Meanwhile, chief executive officer of Mandeville Hospital, Alwyn Miller, said that all efforts were being made to maintain full operations of the hospital following confirmation that 27 staff members from the operating theatre and high-dependency unit have tested positive for COVID-19.

Contingency measures have been activated to mitigate against a collapse in services, he said.

“We have activated our search plan as to how to accommodate patients and maintain certain levels of progress … ,” Miller told The Gleaner.

“It doesn’t mean that the hospital is locking down.”

The immediate changes have caused all elective surgeries to be postponed, with accommodation being made only for emergency surgeries.

A statement issued by the SRHA confirmed that two microbiologists and a public-health team were investigating the circumstances surrounding the infections.

An initial probe revealed that investigations have shown that 10 of the staffers may have contracted the virus outside of the facility.

Blair Walters, addressing the monthly meeting of the Manchester Municipal Corporation on Thursday, expressed concern that healthcare workers tended to drop their guard outside of the workplace.

“Our healthcare workers go home to families many times. They have friends in the community, and sometimes they fall prey to the infection in other circumstances,” Blair Walters said, though not ruling out the possibility that contractions occurred at the hospital.

She said that while the numbers at Mandeville Hospital were alarming and new cases emerging even from other wards, she cautioned that not all cases were necessarily linked to intra-parish infection.

As at Thursday, February 11, Manchester recorded 1,279 cases, with 402 of those cases active.

The parish has recorded 40 deaths, seven of which happened within the last two weeks.

Blair Walters disclosed that there has been a concentration of positive cases in northern and central communities of the parish, including Mandeville and its adjoining neighbourhoods.

The rise in cases in the southern belt is not considered to be comparable to northern and central Manchester.

Blair Walters cited delinquency in mask wearing and physical distancing across the parish as a source of concern. She urged residents and commuters to take responsibility for their health and not depend on the Government and police to disperse crowds.

“It is an all-hands-on-deck approach,” the medical officer of health said.

“Unless we recognise that it is our responsibility, we will continue to see our hospitals bursting out at the seams and a rise in cases and a rise in the number of deaths,” she said.

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