Former UNC MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh is calling on the Health Minister to say if there is a problem with the oxygen system at the Pt Fortin Hospital.
At the Opposition's weekly media briefing on Sunday, Gopeesingh said he understood there was a problem with the system at the hospital.
'What is the problem with the oxygen system in the Point Fortin Hospital? Are there any difficulties patients are experiencing getting the oxygen?'
He asked the question as he said the Kamla Persad-Bissessar-led administration was the one to refurbish or commence or finish construction on several of the facilities being used in the parallel health care system, including the San Fernando Teaching Hospital, the Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility, and the Arima Hospital.
Gopeesingh accused the Health Ministry of deceiving the population into thinking that the parallel health care system meant there were more beds, infrastructure and health care personnel to take care of covid19 patients.
'What they have done is separate existing beds from the main population to use for the so-called parallel healthcare system. They are taking beds in the hospitals from patients suffering from diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and strokes, and compromising their health care.
'On the one hand, the parallel system is at its worst with 2,090 deaths, and on the other hand patients with comorbidities who are supposed to be getting adequate management are finding it difficult to have control, and this is why they are falling prey to covid19 with uncontrolled comorbidities.'
He said the system had also failed in that there were thousands of patients waiting for elective surgeries, some of whom were dying while waiting.
Gopeesingh called for booster doses for people 60 and over, with or without comorbidities. He said the third-dose 'rhetoric' being used by the health ministry is 'semantics from an uncaring government.'
He said the Prime Minister had admitted in his speech on Thursday that the health care system is under imminent threat of complete and total collapse. Gopeesingh said Dr Rowley left out, what Gopeesingh called, several failures on the part of the government in its fight against covid19.
'He omitted the call by the UNC for discussion of covid19 before January 2020, allowing visitors for Carnival 2020, underpreparedness for testing and tracing, ill-preparedness for managing early quarantine, staff shortages, failure of early vaccine acquisition while hundreds of deaths were occurring, confusion in vaccine drive, and allowing mingling of people during the Easter long weekend.
'He left out the failure to get remdesivir when private-sector institutions are using it now, mono-clonal antibodies of Tocilizumab, and plasma from Regeneron for patients in HDU and ICU. These measures could save lives. You've spent $500 million on covid19, but you're not purchasing these lifesaving drugs. Is it that you want these people to die while there are lifesaving drugs that can
