The Maternity Unit of CWM has seen close to 400 cases of COVID-19 admissions since June with 12 of the cases reaching the severe stages of disease.

Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary, Dr James Fong says all but three have recovered.

Dr Fong says the underlying theme in all these recoveries from significant COVID-19 disease is that they were given the opportunity to deal with them early either by admitting the highly vulnerable positive case and monitoring them or supporting a home monitoring program that allowed timely retrieval.

However he says despite these efforts, they continue to see that the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 deaths have been the most vulnerable community members who have arrived too late or succumbed at home.

“When our health teams first saw these patients, most of them were either in a critical condition or had already passed away. We believe that if our health teams were able to see these patients earlier, we may have been able to save them. We know many families are valiantly trying to care for their loved ones at home, but for those who are most at risk of severe COVID-19, home care won’t be enough. These individuals need their oxygen levels closely monitored, likely need access to oxygen therapy, and have clinical teams on stand-by who can rapidly respond if their condition deteriorates”.

Dr Fong adds they have also increased clinical care spaces, and access to therapeutic interventions at the FEMAT field hospital.

The Ministry is scaling up 165 and 158 COVID help line to be able to respond to requests for help.

They have escalated their ability to monitor all positive cases through phone calls and home visits with a focus on an escalated monitoring protocol for high risk cases.

Dr Fong says they have refocused swabbing screening effort to identify positive cases in the vulnerable groups in the community and in those with severe symptoms because they know that people within those vulnerable groups are more at risk of developing

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