Hospital capacity the weakest link in fight against COVID, says Harvey

 

Dr. Kevin Harvey, head of the School of Public Health at the University of Technology, says Jamaica's hospital capacity is the weakest link in the fight against COVID-19 locally.

 

He notes that, given the low hospital capacity, even small spikes are overwhelming health facilities.

 

"When we had the start of the COVID outbreak, we heard talk of improving the hospital capacity, to improve hospital ICU capacity...but one and a half years after, the capacity is very limited....It's not easy to solve and you cannot solve it in the short term but I think we have to recognise now as a country that we have to significantly improve our hospital and public health infrastructure," he pleaded.  

 

Dr. Harvey said the Ministry of Health is also not testing enough and that is skewing the country's COVID-19 positivity rate.

 

If we were doing 10,000 tests per day and we had 500 positives, the positivity rate would be five per cent," he suggested.

 

"The other thing which I find concerning is that we still only report positivity rates based on hospital or public sector testing. This is representing persons, I believe, who are of high risk, persons who are ill or having symptoms, and hence provide a skewed perspective and cannot be considered to be the national positivity rate, because the national positivity rate should take into consideration all testing and not just the testing of the symptomatic, hospitalised or hospital surveillance patients," Dr. Harvey reasoned.