The Arima Hospital is no longer taking in new covid19 patients as the Ministry of Health prepares to remove it from the parallel health system.

The goal is to fully decommission the hospital as a parallel facility and have it return to its intended use by the end of May, Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh told the media on Wednesday during the ministry’s virtual press conference.

He said the facility stopped taking in covid19 patients on Monday. At the time there were 39 patients. On Wednesday the number of patients had dropped to 20.

Deyalsingh said, “All things being equal, we look forward to the full commissioning, which includes the full sanitisation, of Arima by the middle to the end of May so it can be returned to the people of Arima.”

Deyalsingh said it was too early to say if the ministry had future intentions of reintegrating the hospital into the parallel system if the country sees another wave of the virus in the future.

However, the ministry will continue to use a specialised treatment area as a dialysis centre for covid19 patients.

He explained, “Our covid19 hospitalisation rate is at 19 per cent capacity, which is our lowest occupancy level in about a year.

“We will continue to do that even when the facility is fully decommissioned as a covid19 facility. That would be a sort of test case for moving the health system eventually to a hybrid system rather than a parallel system.

“As we prepare for the virus to move from a pandemic state to being an endemic, we are going to be using Arima and all other hospitals eventually, but we can’t say when at this time.

“Moving from the parallel system, we’ll have two separate types of care – one for covid19 one for non-covid19, (and) a kind of hybrid system where in the same facility we would be treating covid19 patients alongside non-covid19 patients.”

By next week the Tacarigua National Racquet Sports Centre will not be used as a step-down facility. The UWI Penal/Debe campus will also be decommissioned and handed back over to the university soon.

In March the ministry said it would maintain UTT Valsayn as a national step-down facility in case it is needed, as well as the St James Hospital.

It also spoke of plans to pack up the field hospital at the Jean Pierre Complex.

The post Arima hospital to stop being covid19 facility by end of May appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.