Summary
- Three patients in ICU at Mount St. John’s Medical Centre.
- Patients experiencing severe respiratory distress.
- Country’s first COVID-19 patient is recovering well.
Three COVID-19 patients are now fighting for their lives at the Mount St. John’s Medical Centre.
Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr. Rhonda Sealey-Thomas said the patients were placed in the Intensive Care Unit after their conditions worsened overtime.
“We do have some critical cases right now at Mount St. John’s Medical Centre ICU and we’re hopeful that with the care that they are receiving there that they will continue to improve,” Sealey-Thomas said.
“It’s mainly because they are having severe respiratory distress and they need the assistance of a ventilator to help them to breathe and to maintain their oxygen levels in their blood to a particular level, and they need that dedicated care and support that is provided in an intensive care unit.
“What happens is that they develop pneumonia and that affects the way that people can breathe and it affects the oxygenation of the blood, which is critical because all your organs, all your tissues, they need oxygen in order to survive. “So, you can understand that it is very important that if the level of oxygen in somebody’s blood drops below a particular level, we have to put measures in place to ensure that the oxygenation levels come up,” Sealey-Thomas added.
She said this is done by giving the patients oxygen and “allowing a machine to breathe for them and that involves very close monitoring.”
The CMO said people who require ventilator support are “really at a critical stage and that’s why it’s important they have dedicated staff do that and right now we have three persons in the ICU on ventilator support for COVID-19.”
On the other hand, the CMO said the country’s first COVID-19 patient is recovering well.
On March 13, the government announced that a 21-year-old woman who traveled from the United Kingdom had tested positive for the virus.
A second test weeks later again returned a positive result.
“We have since re-tested that person because we were quite surprised when the results came back positive because she has been doing very well and she’s been asymptomatic,” Sealey-Thomas said.
“We are very hopeful that the next test that comes back for that individual is negative because she is symptom free.”
