Health Emergency Operation Center Consultant Dr. Sheena Moosa says an assessment of the current health capacity of the country’s healthcare system shows that currently, one nurse has to man 30 beds.
Speaking on Raaje TV’s Khabaru Feetha program, Dr. Sheena said in normal circumstance one nurse has to handle 5 beds and currently one nurse to care for 30 patients.
She said that this would in turn would lower the work rate of both nurses and doctors.
Dr. Sheena said that doctors take 10 hours to complete their rounds at Hulhumale Medical Facility as the number of patients have substantially increased compared to the doctors on hand.
She noted that the number of doctors has decreased as treatment priority should also be given to non-COVID patients.
Dr. Sheena highlighted that a lot of countries recorded a massive number of deaths when the pandemic was first confirmed as their health systems were overwhelmed with the sudden increase of cases and the lack of trained nurses and doctors.
She said that the Maldives can increase the number of beds available by setting up more in schools but there would be no doctors or nurses to treat the influx of patients admitted in those beds.
Dr. Sheena said at this rate more people are likely to die from COVID-19 in the Maldives and that 4 people are currently dying each week. She added that this itself was a remarkably high number.
Earlier today, HEOC Spokesperson Dr. Fathimath Nazla Rafeeq said 62 percent of the COVID-19 beds in the Greater Male’ Area are now occupied.
In a tweet, Dr. Nazla shared a graph on occupied COVID-19 beds in the greater Male’ Area which showed that at 62 percent, the situation has now been classified as at Alert Level 2.
The graph showed that Alert Level 1 as having 30 percent to 59 percent COVID-19 bed occupancy while Alert Level 2 is having a COVID-19 bed occupancy of 60 percent to 79 percent.
