Fresh despair as COVID claims two nurses
Published:Monday | September 13, 2021 | 12:09 AMChristopher Thomas and Ruddy Mathison/Gleaner Writers
The deaths of two nurses from COVID-19 over the weekend has triggered anguish and despair among hospital workers, with senior healthcare personnel exasperated by the failure of the lockdowns to drive down infections fast enough.
The latest victims are mental-health nurse Sudeen Lyn Fatt Colquhoun of the Black River Hospital in St Elizabeth and Donnette Gray-Morris, a nurse manager for the dialysis unit at the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St James.
Concern continues to grow about the capacity of Jamaica’s public hospitals, and its nurses and doctors, to manage soaring admissions that have caused bed space to run out and patients to starve for oxygen.
Dr Delroy Fray, clinical coordinator at the Western Regional Health Authority (WRHA), usually a figure of stoicism, was overcome with emotion on Sunday.
“When I woke up today, I saw the news of the nurse’s death on my phone, and it was so depressing,” said Fray, who promised to organise counselling with staff on Monday.
Fray lamented that the Government’s series of three-day lockdowns, which are set to expire on September 14, do not seem to have made a sufficiently significant impact on the spiralling third wave of infections.
“Based on the numbers, I do not see where the lockdown is working. Whatever advice the Ministry of Health is getting, they must be getting good advice, but I think they are going to rethink it,” said Fray.
“Remember that we are in community spread now, and I have heard patients say that they left their home and got COVID. There must be somewhere where someone visited them and they got the virus because this thing is not travelling by air, and it cannot travel far - a metre or two at maximum,” he added.
Jamaica’s seven-day positivity average has fallen from the mid-40s to 38.2 per cent as at Saturday, but that rate is perilously high - eight times the global benchmark of acceptability of five per cent.
As at Saturday, Jamaica recorded 75,857 total COVID-19 infections, 24,058 of which are currently active cases. There have been 1,731 deaths from the virus to date.
Lyn Fatt Colquhoun died on Friday at The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) after being transferred there with severe respiratory problems.
Her newborn baby, who also tested positive for the virus, is said to be recovering at the Black River Hospital.
Sean Brissett, parish manager for the St Elizabeth Health Services, told The Gleaner that the mental-health nurse did not take the vaccine because she was pregnant.
Lyn Fatt Colquhoun tested positive for the virus and developed breathing difficulties right shortly after childbirth around three weeks ago, said Brissett.
She was first transferred to the Mandeville Hospital and then to the UHWI.
Lyn Fatt Colquhoun’s death followed on the heels of the passing of hospital attendant in the dietary department, Harriet Ledgister Blackwood, who succumbed to COVID-19 complications two weeks ago.
Brissett said that staff morale is low.
“This is a very challenging time for us losing two members of our staff to the virus. Their deaths come at a time when the staff is already overburdened dealing with increased hospital admissions, contact tracing, and vaccination blitzes,” Brissett told The Gleaner.
Fray said that the WRHA was still grappling with grief after the August 31 death of Diagrea Cunningham, who worked at the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital as a supervisor for the paediatric and accident and emergency wards.
Cunningham was the second active nurse in Jamaica to die from the coronavirus following the passing of the Percy Junor Hospital’s Annette White-Best three weeks earlier.
Patsy Edwards-Henry, president of the Nurses Association of Jamaica, was almost inconsolable on Sunday as she prepared to visit grieving colleagues at Black River and Cornwall. She, too, was concerned that there was little more to be done beyond the current lockdowns.
“It is not easy on the nurses because their colleagues are falling right in front of their faces. The same nurses who are caring for others turn around and care for each other. It is very sad,” said Edwards-Henry.