Cornwall Regional gets more beds for COVID patients

Clinical Coordinator at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in St. James, Dr. Delroy Fray, says plans are “well under way” to create an additional 16 bed spaces at the facility for COVID-19 patients.

Addressing a virtual forum hosted by the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday, Dr. Fray said that the objective is to increase the hospital’s capacity to accommodate COVID-19 patients, as the parish continues to see an increase in the number of positive cases.

He informed that there are now 58 COVID-19 patients at the hospital, 29 of whom are being housed on the 25-bed capacity COVID-19 ward.

“The numbers are increasing and our admissions are increasing. We have a ward dedicated for just COVID-19 as we were very proactive when this infection started, but it has a capacity of 25 and we are housing 29 here now. We have a high-dependency unit that can deal with critical cases that can house four [patients]; that is like an intensive-care unit (ICU),” he noted.

Dr. Fray said that the hospital administration has been actively planning for the spike in COVID-19 admissions.

“Every morning, we sit down and we look at what we have and we plan for the future. So what we have done now is that some of the medical spaces… on the ninth floor and on the seventh floor, we have to now fit those places to admit COVID-19 patients. Every day we have to sit down and plan like that because we don’t want to be caught off-guard,” he said.

Dr. Fray noted that the 36-bed field hospital being erected on the grounds of the Falmouth Public General Hospital in Trelawny will come on stream in short order to accommodate an overflow of COVID-19 patients from CRH.

“We just had a meeting [Thursday] and we are going to be looking to see how we can expedite [the project],” he said.

As at Thursday, February 18, there were 378 active cases of COVID-19 in St. James.

Meanwhile, Dr. Fray said that the hospital is moving to address the issue of social patients, who are occupying beds that could be made available for persons in need of hospital care.

“In fact, we are creating 16 more spaces, and yet we have 16 patients in hospital that don’t need to be here, and that’s one of the issues that we now have to be tightening up on as the pandemic continues,” he said.

-JIS NEWS

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