80 per cent recovery rate at Infectious Diseases Hospital

The Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal is seeing an 80 per cent recovery rate of patients infected with COVID-19.

This was revealed by Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony, during Thursday’s COVID-19 update.

Over the last two years, some 4,183 patients were treated at the Infectious Diseases Hospital. Approximately 3,786 of these were COVID-19 patients.

“The 80 per cent recovery is comparable with what we have seen globally. Because, as you can imagine, the patients who were very sick would come to us, and especially during the delta wave, they had lots of complications…It was challenging to manage some of these patients but I think we are within that global norm when it comes to COVID,” Dr Anthony said.

The facility currently has eight COVID-19 patients, with three in the ICU.

Minister Anthony also expressed that the facility has the capacity for some 64 doctors and 107 nurses.

He noted that “…at the peak of the pandemic, we had 64 doctors working there with 107 nurses. Currently, because of the small number of patients, there are 26 doctors, and 53 nurses working different shifts. Some of these doctors and nurses are part-time workers. Currently, there is adequate staff to cover the patient load.”

The facility can house approximately 198 patients.  A new area was also set up to facilitate patients with monkeypox for clinical treatment or isolation.

He said over the last two years, a host of infrastructural improvements were made to the facility to provide adequate care to persons.

There have been 27 reported COVID-19 cases within the last 24 hours, taking the total number of active cases to 256.