Now, persons like chairlady Villanueva-Pott - who may be feeling symptoms - the vast majority of them will have positive outcomes, and the COVID-19 will not see them going into intensive care.
But, for the very few who end up there - the question has been asked for months: are there enough ventilators? Well, right now there are only 6 ventilators at the KHMH, and none installed and available at the regional hospitals.
That may sound worrisome to you, but DHS Manzanero's spin on the whole thing is that having ventilators is one thing, but having knowledgeable professionals to operate them is quite another:
Dr. Marvin Manzanero - Director of Health Services
"The issue of ventilators, yes, Karl Heusner does have 6, there are 6 ventilators here, 3 are on their way now to Karl Heusner and by this Friday they would have the ability to have set up 12 ventilators. Even if we have 20,25,30,50 ventilators where all our Covid19 beds have a ventilator, we have to also understand what our health system has to offer and our challenges in terms of human resources. Now, why am I saying this? We have two, three intensivists in Belize City and no intensivist that is doing intensive care work outside of Belize City. So, even if you have twenty-twenty-five ventilators in your referral hospital, you don't have intensivist that are going to be managing that. Granted, you may train internists and that is a part of the process that has been ongoing but you are still not going to have enough. This morning we checked with Deputy Director and we may have less than ten Belizean internists spread out across the country. Having an I.C.U. bed with a ventilator is not as easy as just setting up a ventilator; you need staff, you may need up to two nurses per ventilated patient in an I.C.U. and then you have to talk about shifts, two or three shifts. It is not as easy as just setting up a ventilator and assume that it will necessarily solve the problem."
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