COVID-19 and Belize’s Response, One Year Later
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted thousands across the country, including those on the frontline in the medical profession. Since the first case in Belize was recorded back in March of last year, limited access has been granted to the media to view firsthand how the COVID-19 Unit at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital operates. It’s been one year since health officials began tracking the virus’s progress from China to Belize and almost a year since the first cases were recorded in the country. Tonight, News Five’s Isani Cayetano gets exclusive access to the COVID-19 Unit and the work that’s being done on the frontline in the fight against the disease. Here’s that story.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
In mid-January 2020, local health officials became aware of an unusual respiratory illness that was quickly spreading across China. At the time, there wasn’t much that was known about the virulent disease other than the fact that it was thought to be natural and had originated from animals through what is known as a spillover event. Chief Executive Officer Michelle Hoare, of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital Authority, recalls her first COVID-19 notification.
Michelle Hoare
Michelle Hoare, Chief Executive Officer, K.H.M.H.A.
“In January of 2020, I received a text message that there may be admissions coming from the Phillip Goldson International Airport to K.H.M.H. with a diagnosis of COVID. What will be our response? Will we be able to accept these cases? And I was like, “Are we there already?”
By early February, the United States began recording COVID-19 casualties and that’s when Belize took serious note of the propagation of the novel coronavirus.
Michelle Hoare
“We started, of course, and I organized a meeting with my management team. Of course, we’d been tracking the news internationally and so I organized a meeting with the management team to say, “Listen, this thing is getting serious.” COVID wasn’t even declared a pandemic yet, but we needed to start at least planning what would be our response in the event that it is declared a pandemic because we know that once it‘s declared a pandemic, border countries affected, Belize will be at risk.”
Part of that planning included the establishment of the COVID-19 Unit, an entity within the national referral hospital dedicated to patients who either tested positive for the disease or were under investigation as potential cases.
Casilda Bowman
Casilda Bowman, Manager, COVID-PUI Unit
“We receive all COVID positive patients who are in distress, we manage them here. We have a bed capacity of twenty-three that we can house and we have a bed capacity of thirteen that we can hold for patients who are under investigation. That means that they are not positive yet but we are waiting for the results.”
Belize’s first COVID-19 case was recorded in March of last year, however, the first person to be admitted for treatment came sometime thereafter as a referral from the Western Regional Hospital. By then, K.H.M.H. had been prepared, having already procured the necessary equipment, including ventilators, and retrofitted the facility to accommodate COVID patients.
Michelle Hoare
“The plan was to prepare an isolation critical care space. That meant, in terms of resource, that we had to provide the required oxygen support, we had to prepare the necessary ventilators, infusion pumps, you know, cardiac monitors and those types of equipment. And so we started our procurement process for ventilators, K.H.M.H. as an authority, and again sharing with ministry our plans, they were able to provide additional support. So we started initially with four additional ventilators for COVID critical care management and the ministry quickly procured an additional six for us.”
Those breathing machines were placed here, in the wing of the hospital that was once the Accident and Emergency section. This area has been modified to treat patients with varying degrees of COVID-related illness. Notwithstanding the medical equipment and beds that are presently available at the unit, lack of human resources remains an issue.
Casilda Bowman
“One of our biggest challenges of course is, because we have a lot of patients and we have a limited amount of nurses. So our human resources is one of our biggest challenge that we are facing right now. The problem that we probably had in the past, like not having enough equipment and having enough cardiac monitors, we are not seeing that as a challenge but more the human resources aspect.”
Late last year when a significant increase in the number of cases was recorded, the health system became overwhelmed. The ratio of nurses and doctors to patients suffering from COVID-19 was severely lopsided.
Michelle Hoare
“The demand on the human resource was really, really challenging because we saw more and more that now the country was in a response mode, not only K.H.M.H., and so as other areas within the health sector, the public health sector, ran into their own set of challenges because of exposure, because of quarantine, et cetera. We had to sit down and actually share resources and human resource became a part of that sharing.”
Cuba’s Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade arrived in country to lend assistance with Belize’s COVID response; however, coupled with a mounting death toll, the situation, particularly for frontline personnel, became dire. Not all were prepared mentally to cope with what they were experiencing firsthand and at times it proved too much to bear.
Michelle Hoare
“Seeing patients die, you know, sometimes we would hear from them what they go through, to just see patients die each time and… It became very challenging and it became hard on them and so that level of psychological support, we had to intervene by providing that level of counseling, whether it’s one-on-one, whether it’s through peer support or specialist intervention. We had to find a way to support the staff.”
Casilda Bowman is head of the COVID-19 Patients Under Investigation Unit. She’s seen it all where patient mortality is concerned.
Casilda Bowman
“It’s hard when we lose patients. I see the psychological effects that most people don’t get to see on the outside, you know. They see us come to work but they don’t understand how hard it is. One: we are away from our families because we have to self-isolate, and two: we do form some sort of attachment to our patients. Even though we are in a suit, they can’t see us as much, but we do have a connection to them and when they don’t survive it really impacts us.”
Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.
