The Accident & Emergency department at the Madang Provincial Hospital has recorded 74 Covid-19 positive cases for the last three weeks after carrying out a total of 203 tests.
Emergency Physician, Dr. Juith Gawi, said swabs were done on patients who presented themselves with COVID-19 symptoms at the outpatient area.
He said the department has seen a surge in the number of cardiovascular diseases like stroke, chest pain and treatment failure malaria.
“Since October the Madang Provincial Hospital had recorded 74 positive Covid-19 cases and 25 Covid-19 deaths, while 55 Covid-19 patients were discharged from the A&E department for home quarantined.”
“They were then followed up by the surveillance team while some came back for review through the A&E department and had recovered.” Gawi said.
Gawi added, the hospital is still working to have its isolation ward fully functional for covid-19 patients thus most of the covid19 patients were also kept at the A&E department.
“The A&E department has a 15-bed capacity that normally gets patients from all districts of Madang.”
“For now, Covid-19 patients are being admitted and treated in the A&E Department.”
Furthermore, he said it is risky for the hospital to nurse Covid-19 patients in the same department as the non-covid patients while waiting for the isolation ward to be up fully functioning.
The hospital has tried to help the situation by partially separating them for now.
The biggest challenge they are currently being faced with is bed limitations and lack of manpower due to the recent strike by nurses in the country.
“Another challenge is the mortuary which is full to capacity.”
“There are a number of unclaimed bodies that caused the mortuary to be full and we are unable to accommodate other bodies coming in.”
He added, they are also faced with the challenge of adequate Oxygen supply for all the patients.
“The department has two multi-facet oxygen concentrators that can supply oxygen to eight patients only which is four patients to one concentrator.”
However, despite the decrease in the number of Covid-19 cases, the department is still seeing more patients turning up with Covid like symptoms.