Minister of Health and Wellness Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bostic (left) on tour of the BDF’s medical field hospital this morning. Second from left is deputy chair of the QEH’s Board of Management Dr. Abdul Mohamed and at right is Senior Medical Officer of Health Dr. Arthur Phillips. (C.Pitt/BGIS)

A medical field facility, set up at Jemmotts Lane, St. Michael, will begin receiving patients tomorrow as Government continues to introduce measures aimed at protecting the Queen Elizabeth Hospital from the impact of COVID-19.

Minister of Health and Wellness, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bostic, toured the facility this morning, and in an interview with the media afterwards, shared that it has been set up “to give first of all, some critical support to the QEH, in addition to some critical support to the overall national effort in terms of our response to COVID-19”.

He explained that the field hospital, located on the compound of the University of the West Indies’ Clinical Research Unit, would see and treat persons presenting with moderate respiratory illnesses.

“We want to continue to isolate the lone tertiary health institution in the country, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. 

So when you present and you come here, you will be treated here; you will be swabbed here and then you will wait here until those results are back from the Best-dos Santos Public Health Laboratory.

“And depending on the nature of the results, then the determinations will be made as to exactly where those persons will go within the entire system, but it is really, for the most part, out of an abundance of caution, an initiative that is aimed at trying to keep COVID-19 positive patients out of the QEH.”

The Health and Wellness Minister disclosed that the medical team assigned to the field hospital includes a number of Cuban nurses who are in Barbados assisting the country with its COVID-19 response.

joy.springer@barbados.gov.bb

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