GPHC moving to transfer patients to ICU at Ocean View Hospital this week

Nov 10, 2020 News

The ‘Ocean View COVID-19 Hospital’

Kaieteur News – During this week it is expected that critical care COVID-19 patients at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) will be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Liliendaal Infectious Disease Hospital better known as the Ocean View COVID-19 Hospital.
This disclosure was given by a senior health official at the hospital, who stated that they are already gearing up for the long-awaited transfer of patients. These “critical care” patients are persons who require treatment in the COVID-19 ICU at the GPHC since they have deteriorating symptoms.
The announcement came days after Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, told this newspaper in an exclusive interview that works on the ICU at the facility were almost finished. The Minister said that they did not want to move persons into the facility while there were ongoing works.
At the time of the interview, oxygen lines, suction lines and other gas lines were already in place at the facility but ventilators were still being installed. Adding to that, Dr. Anthony said that the ICU will have 25 beds and an extra four beds in the theatre and the theatre recovery area.
Kaieteur News understands that the necessary equipment being used at the GPHC will also be moved to the facility along with staff and additional personnel will be provided, where necessary, by the Ministry of Health.
The Health Minister had said that the overall goal is to ease the burden of dealing with the COVID-19 virus from the GPHC.
Since the onset of the virus in March, the GPHC has been the centralized unit managing COVID-19 in Guyana and has been pressured with a high influxes of cases and lack of space in certain instances. In light of this, almost all of the COVID-19 patients being housed at the GPHC will be transferred to the Ocean View facility, which will see the hospital returning to some level of “normalcy,” according to Minister Anthony.
Dr. Anthony said that the GPHC will be in charge of managing the Ocean View Hospital, giving them a different site and facilities to deal with COVID-19.
Further, he shared that it will also enable the GPHC to carry out separate functions, meaning that they will have the capacity to house patients with other illnesses, seeing more patients are going to the GPHC for treatment.
The previous A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition government had spent $1.6 billion to ‘rehabilitate’ the Ocean View facility; however, the money was expended with works still incomplete.
That led to an additional $750 million being spent by the new government to complete the works and operationalize the facility.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News