WILLEMSTAD - “We hope that we can start oncology again next week, because we desperately need it,” says Germaine Gibbs, spokesperson for the Curaçao Medical Center (CMC). Now, the number of Covid positives in Curaçao is decreasing per day.
"But that doesn't mean we're out of the precarious situation," Gibbs explains. "We also want to start again with elective care in the next two to three weeks and even allow outpatient appointments to continue."
After the island went into a strict lockdown on March 24 and subsequently the vaccination process was scaled up, the number of Covid-positives has decreased drastically in the past period. However, the number of patients admitted to the hospital with Covid remains high. “We currently (Sunday, April 25) have 71 positive Covid patients in the hospital, 29 of whom are in intensive care (IC),” said Gibbs.
Another nine patients were admitted to the hospital in Aruba, four of which were flown back on Friday. Five are still there in the IC. “The number is indeed starting to decline, but as long as we cannot provide elective care, we are still in a critical situation,” said the local hospital spokesperson.
Support
During the Easter weekend, twenty Dutch nurses and doctors were flown in to support the CMC in providing medical care. The care workers are deployed in all departments to provide support where possible.
That this support is desperately needed, became clear from a number of testimonials of ICU nurses that were shared on social media in recent weeks. Including that of Irina Scheffers, IC nurse at the CMC. She talked about the high workload and the impact this has on her.
“In the fifteen years that I have worked in the ICU, I have never worked under these kinds of conditions. The workload is inhumanly high, the stress is enormous, the responsibility cannot be borne, and the deaths are many. Some help has arrived, but unfortunately not in the form of qualified IC staff, which means that final responsibility remains with a small select group,” says Scheffers.
Hot insulation suit
The IC nurse explains the circumstances under which she must work every day. “I would like to be able to urinate normally during my shift and I would like to eat and drink. I simply do not have time for that right now. I would not want to run around in a sweltering insulation suit for 8.5 hours. I would not like to be surrounded by so much sorrow and misery. I would like people to understand that our patients in the ICU are full of life, just like you and me, and not simply people with a medical condition.”
Scheffers continues: “That doesn't make it any less bad that young people die. People who are obese or have hypertension (high blood pressure) or diabetes can also have twenty or thirty years to live. These are people with a partner, sometimes with young children, with parents, brothers, sisters, friends. These are active in the labor market, in associations, at the church, you name it. Ordinary people with ordinary lives,” said the ICU nurse.
Measures
Gibbs emphasizes that while the number of Covid positives per day is declining, people must continue to adhere to the measures. “We hope the number continues to decline, so people still have to stick to the rules and get vaccinated. Only when we have more space, especially in the ICU, do we start to normalize.”