By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Health Minister Dr Duane Sands believes the country should return to harsher COVID-19 measures as both public and private healthcare systems continue to be gripped by crisis.

He also told The Tribune he doesn’t believe the nation has seen the worst of the pandemic, adding that while stricter measures are not the only answer to reduce infections, they do work.

He spoke the day after Dr Raquel Davis-Hall described the strain the virus has placed on Princess Margaret Hospital in stark terms, insisting the institution has “passed the breaking point”.

She said sections of the facility are “bursting at the seams” and that the hospital is already at the point of collapse.

PMH is currently in the worst state it has been in since the start of the pandemic last year, Dr Davis-Hall said.

Yesterday, the Nassau Guardian reported that Doctors Hospital is “out of space” and “out of staff” and choosing which patient is placed on a ventilator.

“It is not only a crisis but a tragedy and so we’re seeing people in their 20s and 30s dying of COVID,” Dr Sands said while describing what he’s been seeing in hospitals in recent days.

“We’re seeing people in their 50s and 60s and 70s dying of COVID. In the last 24 hours we’ve had at least five people die and I don’t believe that we’ve seen the worst of the end.

“I have been calling for stricter measures now for more than a month,” Dr Sands said. “It’s not the only answer but people have to understand that public health measures work, social distancing works, wearing masks works, washing your hands works and while vaccination is a critical and important part of the programme, we don’t have a majority or plurality of our population vaccinated and even if you use those doses of Pfizer the minimum time to get people protected with Pfizer will be six weeks and if you go with AstraZeneca you are talking 10 to 12 weeks.”

As the country tries to reach herd immunity, Dr Sands said now is the time for there to be harsher measures put in place.

“We are going to have to rely on the tried and true public health measures that work. You cannot have a situation where all of your health capacity is filled up and you don’t even have the option of admitting people with regular medical problems in some instances.

“So, you have to try to regain some ground because the next step is the unpalatable conversation that every country has had to face at some time or another is triage to determine who benefits from scarce resources.”

Dr Sands said Bahamians have not taken COVID-19 seriously but need to acknowledge the threat is real.

“We cannot afford the type of view or the type of consideration that we have put on many of the other challenges that have faced us,” he said.

“Bahamians don’t claim their diabetes. They don’t claim their high blood pressure. They don’t claim their obesity or overweight, but they suffer from it and now we have collectively not claimed the severity and the seriousness of COVID and so these public health measures we think they ain’t really for us and this vaccination thing is the ‘mark of the beast'.”

The government has thus far resisted implementing strict restrictions on people’s ability to assemble and move throughout New Providence during the third wave of COVID-19, emphasising the arrival of vaccines points to a way out of the pandemic.

But even as residents show greater willingness to get the jabs, hospital officials are worried their institutions cannot cope with the deluge of patients.

“People are dying,” Dr Davis-Hall said Tuesday. “Young people are dying. We have people pull up at the Critical Care Block not breathing and we do all that we can to assist them and we are limited in our reach and in our scope. There are things that we don’t have in this institution to help our fellow man. We want to have negative pressure rooms in the emergency rooms (but) we don’t have that and so our efforts for these patients are limited.”

Dr Davis-Hall said the Accident & Emergency Department needs more nurses. She said tents donated recently by Samaritan’s Purse were a welcome gift, but they are already filled to capacity under the surge of COVID-19 patients.

Meanwhile PMH, Grand Bahama Health Services (GBHS), and Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre (SRC) continued to experience a staff “sick out” for a seventh day.

Therefore the Public Hospitals Authority recommended, where possible, the public access services at community clinics for non-urgent care, as affected institutions may experience delays in services.