Changes Made At Cornwall Regional Hospital To Fight COVID-19

Infrastructural changes have been made to the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH), in St. James, to bolster the fight against the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

These adjustments include a new isolation ward, which is slated to be opened soon, and conversion of the recently constructed accident and emergency ward into a (COVID-19) ward, consisting of 20 beds.

At a press briefing on Thursday (April 9) at Sandals Inn, after he toured the CRH, Minister of Health and Wellness , Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, commended the management and staff of the hospital for rising to the occasion to combat COVID-19.

“They have prepared themselves adequately to deal with the issues. There is no doubt that you have risen to the occasion and what I see at Cornwall pleases me and tells me that you are doing what is necessary to prepare yourself to deal with COVID-19,” he said.

The Minister also assured residents in western Jamaica that the public health infrastructure “can and will deal with cases of COVID-19 to the extent that we have them, and at the primary health care level, the public health infrastructure is doing amazing work to prevent, in the first instance, and in the second instance, to contain the spread through the contact tracing.”

Dr. Tufton also lauded public health workers across the island for their role in helping to curtail the spread of the virus.

“(They) are the ones that go out in the field each day in the communities , meeting and interviewing (residents), taking temperatures, logging information as part of the critical operations of trying to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the general public,” he highlighted.

In the meantime, the Minister told journalists that there were six confirmed cases of COVID – 19 in two western parishes so far.
He reported that St. James has four cases, two of whom have recovered, with the remaining two still undergoing treatment; and Westmoreland has two cases, one of whom has died.