Over 7,000 COVID-19 hospital admissions recorded in 2020

More than 7,700 patients infected with COVID-19 were admitted to public hospitals last year.

Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton said that this represents approximately five per cent of all admissions.   

“The case fatality rate related to COVID-19 is currently 1.8 per cent which is less than the global average of 2.2 per cent. Our track record is better than that of the world average,” said Tufton during his contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Gordon House this afternoon.

Tufton said that the ministry is targeting 65 per cent of the Jamaican population to be vaccinated by March 2022.

He asserted that Jamaica's public health system and healthcare workers have “stood up to the task” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, while continuing to respond to other health challenges faced by Jamaicans.

Provisional data from the health ministry indicates that in 2020, there were 2.8 million visits to public health facilities compared to 3.3 million in 2019.

Last year, 1.8 million people visited health centres compared to two million in 2019.  

“We had a million visits to public hospitals when compared with 1.2 million the year before,” Tufton said.

He noted that total surgical operations increased in 2020 to approximately 52,000 compared to 34,000 last year.

“[There were] one hundred and forty five thousand admissions for care, and [we] assisted in the delivery of 34,259 births. We provided some 289,000 diagnostic imaging services including X-rays, CT scans and MRIs and we did almost eight million lab tests last year,” Tufton added.

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