The COVID-19 unit at the Suddie Regional Hospital will be completed this week to accommodate persons who have tested positive for the disease; so far, there are ten persons in isolation at another building within the hospital’s compound.
At the Suddie Regional Hospital, authorities have converted the maternity waiting room into its COVID-19 Unit. The building is being retrofitted to include a delivery room for pregnant mothers, who have tested positive for the disease and it has approximately 20 rooms to accommodate two patients each.
Regional Health Officer, Dr Ranjeev Singh said while the facility was built for pregnant mothers, it was never used. When the News Room visited the hospital on Monday, the contractor said all construction will finish on Friday.
Region Two has recorded 182 COVID-19 cases up to Monday with 118 recoveries and four deaths. The Regional Health Officer expects another 20 persons will be discharged by the end of the year. He said the majority of positive COVID-19 cases in the region are persons between the ages of 20 and 35.
Dr Singh said a strategy was developed to deal with this issue through which quarantine areas are allotted in the communities for these persons. A team is then sent from the Ministry of Health to swab them and if the test is negative, they are then allowed to mix with other residents.
Meanwhile, the hospital has acquired a ventilator and a concentrator to assist critical patients.
“About a month ago, the ministry gave us a brand new ventilator and an oxygen concentrator meaning that: you don’t have to get oxygen bottle, you don’t have to get lines with oxygen but this concentrator can collect the air from the atmosphere and convert it to oxygen so that the patients who are having shortness of breath and so can be given oxygen,” Dr Singh explained.
Guyana has so far confirmed close to 6,000 COVID-19 cases with over 5,000 recoveries.
