Ocean View Hotel now being prepared for COVID-19 patients

The caretaker coalition Administration has now started to examine facilities to keep persons who test positive for the coronavirus.

Caretaker Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, who heads the National COVID-19 Task Force, communicated via a virtual press conference on Saturday, that the caretaker Government has initiated efforts to prepare the Ocean View Hotel, located at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara, into a hospital facility.
“The technical team of the Ministry of Public Infrastructure is involved at this time. I think they have made an assessment as to the needs of the building itself. They might have given the number of persons expected to house there. It is not mainly as a quarantine…as a kind of ancillary hospital coronavirus confirmed cases,” he said.
The Public Health Ministry had chosen to cordon off a section of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) to serve as a quarantine site despite much criticism. However, as the cases continued to surge, other regional hospitals were identified to house patients.
The four medical facilities prepared thus far are major hospitals, with high traffic of patients every day. Adding to that, these centralised locations present a higher possibility of contraction.
Now that the country has reached some 24 positive cases and an alarming four deaths, the National COVID-19 Task Force is now hurrying to have provisions put in place. With uncertainty as to when the renovation works will be completed, Nagamootoo stated that they are leaning on the fact that there will be no need for beds until then.
“We can follow up on that to see what actually is the timeframe within which this would be completed…I hope it remains at 23 and…that there are no more immediate need for beds and accommodation,” he asserted.

Sports Hall and Gymnasium
The Cliff Anderson Sports Hall and National Gymnasium were cited as other possible alternatives. Authorities are seeking to have 1000 beds available to accommodate persons in need of isolation, even though the Pan American Health Organisation predicts that the cases will climb to some 20,000.
This announcement came after many persons in mandatory quarantine complained about the appalling condition of the facilities.
Khalid Gobin, a Guyanese student, who has been quarantined at a facility along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, had approached the High Court seeking an order for him to be released from the facility, arguing that not only is he being wrongfully detained, he is also being held in deplorable conditions.
The university student said that he was forced to share bathrooms and beds with other persons and does not have access to sanitation facilities, except for the one bar of soap that was provided.
Gobin was among several passengers who arrived in Guyana from Barbados via a Trans Guyana flight last month and was immediately taken into quarantine although being told that he would be tested for COVID-19 at the Eugene F Correira Airport and allowed to go home to self-quarantine.
On Thursday, Justice Brassington Reynolds struck out an application by Gobin. He ruled on the fact that he is satisfied that the measures invoked under the Public Health Ordinance were not arbitrary, and the facility in which the young man is being kept meets international standards.
Attorney Sanjeev Datadin contended, however, that he is not challenging the Public Health Ordinance but the condition in which his client is being held. He added that the condition is a threat to his client’s health and that of others, as should anyone test positive, everyone else will contract the deadly disease.
The latest statistics provided indicate that 23 persons tested positive for the virus, with 34 persons in institutional quarantine, 12 in institutional isolation and 149 in home quarantine.