COVID-19 News: Corozal and Orange Walk Districts Cause for Concern
The COVID-19 figures continue on the rise across the country. More than five thousand cases have been confirmed positive, with more than two thousand, three hundred active cases scattered across the country. Almost every day the Ministry of Health and Wellness records at least two COVID-19 related deaths and the death toll keeps rising. The two northern districts have recorded the most COVID-19 deaths and the ministry has decided to shift its services to effectively manage the surge of cases. Director of Health Services Doctor Marvin Manzanero says that the ideal method to deal with the surge of hospitalized victims is to shift around the services provided by the hospitals.
Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services
Dr. Marvin Manzanero
“I think the pressing concern will be Corozal where we have do what is called the shifting of health services. Corozal has for example an NHI and a non NHI in the hospital. That has been taken away for the time being because of your resource, because of your infrastructure. So that in point of fact you will have just an inpatient department. There is no patient in the outpatient that is classified as NHI or non-NHI. Then you have a ward for persons under investigation, a ward for COVID-19 patients and maternity ward. So you are basically working with the numbers as you go along. So Corozal for example this morning reported that they had twelve patients hospitalized, six patients are under investigation which meaning they pending on confirmation of a result but you treat it as a potential positive case and you have six patients hospitalized and are confirmed positive, which means that for that area, they will have five beds available but through the weekend they went up to seventeen which is the max they have had. So you shift your health services based on where you are going, you cancel elective surgeries, you may have to cut back on your health patient department, patients that can be discharged and be followed up at home, that is being done depending on the numbers you are seeing. The straight answer would be Corozal and Orange Walk and also San Ignacio, Belmopan we are monitoring closely because of the amount of patients turning up in that area. South doesn’t seem to be having that situation as yet. You have to factor in that beyond the physical infrastructure we are also having health staff that are turning up positive particularly up north. What you do is shifting of health services within your facility. If in point of fact you start to have a facility that is overwhelmed then you will have to consider whether you turn in to an actual COVID-19 unit. And then channel your patients to your regional hospitals or you do it vice versa. “You work along with the numbers you have as has been happening with, for example, Karl Heusner that’s been gradually expanding their COVID 19 unit where they initially had six ventilators to now they having the ability to ventilate between eighteen to twenty patients. So, you expand as you move along with the resources. You fold back some services because you don’t have that huge amount of human resources that you can carry forward with whatever you need to do. So you fold back on the electives and things that you can and we basically keep an A & E wing and a COVID 19 situation.”
