40 covid-19 patients hospitalised, four in ICU

9
Infectious Disease Centre (IDC)

Medical Director of Mount St. John’s Medical Centre (MSJMC) Medical Director, Dr. Albert Duncan, said 40 people were hospitalised with the COVID-19 disease.

 

He said some patients were at MSJMC and others were being treated at the Infectious Disease Control Centre (IDC).

 

“At the present time, we have 33 patients that are hospitalised somewhere in the hospital system between the IDC and the hospital proper that are confirmed and seven patients that are waiting for confirmation,” Duncan said on state media Monday night.

 

He said those awaiting confirmation had not yet received a PCR test result but had tested positive using rapid antigen tests.

The Medical Director said some of the patients at the hospital were in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

“We have a total of 16 people in the IDC, we have five people in the ICU, we have the COVID ward that we just established, we have a total of 14 people on that ward, and the ER has four people in the ER at the present time”, he revealed.

 

“The people in the ICU, as you could imagine, are seriously ill. We have a total of three out of four people in the ICU on the respirator, and one person is receiving CPAP, which is a form of oxygen therapy without the use of the ventilators,” Dr. Duncan added.

 

The Medical Director said, “the other folks are between moderate to mild”.

He further revealed, “Most of the patients presently now in he IDC has been down-staged to mild disease; a total of 11 out of 16. The other five are moderate.”

 

Despite reporting some challenges, Dr. Duncan said he believed the hospital was prepared to manage a rise in cases.

 

“We’re equipped to take some more people in the hospital itself at Mount St. John’s based on the arrangements we have made and at this time we’re speculating that we can probably manage about 50 people in the hospital environment as it is right now,” he said.

 

“The more the patients become severely ill, then we’ll be challenged from a human resource point of view because we need people to run the ventilators and do the critical care.”

 

“Right now, we’re able to cope with what we have in terms of critical care and the manpower. We’re having some trouble, some people are not well, some people have been sick and so forth, so that has put a little strain on the system, but right now we’re managing very well, and we just have to decide to share the resource where they are needed”, the Medical Director explained.

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9 COMMENTS

  1. 120 active cases of which 40 in hospital or disease unit. ONE THIRD OF CASES ARE IN MEDICAL CARE up from one quarter on Monday morning.

    Dr. Duncan, I ask for the umpteenth time – does msjmc have SEPARATE AIR HANDLING SYSTEM FOR ICU & YOUR RECENTLY ESTABLISHED COVID WARD?

    does msjmc have DOUBLE BARRIER ENTRY/EXIT POINTS FOR ALL COVID AREAS? With strict protocols observed by medical team (& do you have sufficient PPE for them?)

    I am afraid this airborne virus will spread to non-covid patients requiring hospital attention for crashes, strokes, heart attacks, cancer etc etc.

    WHEN will the 75 bed Nugent Avenue facility open…either 100% covid treatment or 100% non-covid treatments.

    PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.

    • That’s nowhere near 33%.

      This tells you that there are MANY cases out in the community that are not being identified or counted because there’s not enough testing happening. Those people probably have no symptoms or mild symptoms or are poor and medically underserved.

      If we do some quick math — (0.0042X) = 40, then X = 9523. So there would be approximately 9523 actual COVID-positive people on island.

      Shocking number but would explain why even the minimal testing that is being done is showing positive cases with each batch and why businesses all over the island are having to close.

      One thing to keep in mind, cases numbers will continue to grow exponentially each day unless there is a strict lockdown with borders closed where everyone but essential workers stays home for 2 weeks or 1 month or so.

      And no more of that we can’t close borders because we need tourist $$$ nonsense. Because either you close your borders and institute a lockdown post haste or the borders will be closed anyway when people stop coming to Antigua because your island is full of disease.

      So if there are over 9500 cases today, imagine how many there will be in a week if nothing drastic is done to stop the spread.

      This is going to be a serious disaster that will have ramifications for all of Antigua society because of a botched and immoral pandemic response. But at least PM Clown got his vaccine. So maybe he’ll be okay.

      but he should be impeached or whatever the equivalent process is in Antigua.

      https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html

      • You can expect about 285 deaths from those cases if we use the worldometers numbers of a 3% infection fatality rate.

        But remember the number of active cases is growing exponentially every day so long as drastic measures to stop the spread are not taken.

        This is a result of a perfect storm of:

        1. The government never sending a strong public health message about how serious this disease is. Instead for months the MOH claimed the island was COVID free with no community spread. To this day, they MOH will not admit there is community spread.

        – Of course the people of the island would not take this threat seriously when the government for months and months said there was no real threat

        2. Weak and lax enforcement of weak and lax pandemic policies that only apply to a small fraction of people.

      • I pretty much agree with everything you said. The PM needs to take decisive action, but at the moment he seems missing in action, apart for a bizarre admission that he had himself vaccinated 3 weeks ago in secret. Lock down is regrettably the only option now, since the government and corporate backers have put us in this position. Many of us warned you this would happen months ago when you opened the borders. The government is clearly floundering, if the recent abortive live press conference is anything to go by. They need to either take action now or get out of the way

  2. You can expect about 285 deaths from those cases if we use the worldometers numbers of a 3% infection fatality rate.

    But remember the number of active cases is growing exponentially every day so long as drastic measures to stop the spread are not taken.

    This is a result of a perfect storm of:

    1. The government never sending a strong public health message about how serious this disease is. Instead for months the MOH claimed the island was COVID free with no community spread. To this day, they MOH will not admit there is community spread.

    – Of course the people of the island would not take this threat seriously when the government for months and months said there was no real threat

    2. Weak and lax enforcement of weak and lax pandemic policies that only apply to a small fraction of people.

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