WILLEMSTAD - “More and more people from the risk group of 65 years and older are entering the hospital and that is a worrying development,” says Edmelyn Albertus, nurse in the Intensive Care (ICU) in the local hospital the Curaçao Medical Center (CMC) in Curaçao.
Albertus: “All these patients are infected at home by their children, grandchildren or other family members. We can hardly cope with this concern anymore.”
Albertus has been working with COVID-positive patients from the very first patient who entered the ICU and died. She is concerned now that more and more frail older people in the risk group are becoming infected. "For a long time it seemed as if Curaçao had escaped the dance because relatively few COVID patients had ended up in hospital and died of the virus."
The ICU nurse is concerned now that the number of infections has passed 500 active cases.
In the meantime, all non-emergency operations have already been stopped after the CMC's health personnel themselves have become infected on a large scale. “We determine per day when this care can be scaled up again,” says Germain Gibbs, spokesman for the CMC.
The CMC has now made an official request for assistance to the Netherlands. “Last weekend the first Dutch doctors and nurses arrived on the island,” said Gibbs.
There have also been American nurses on the island since June. "Fortunately, they have had the time to be properly trained, so that they can now get started right away". Other Caribbean islands have also made nurses and doctors available.
The shortage of staff creates a high workload in the hospital. “We regularly have a shortage of staff,” says Maricson Thielman, a nurse at the Emergency Department (A&E). "We run many shifts and fortunately we now receive support from other departments and nurses from different countries who have flown in to support the hospital."
"Patients just walk into the hospital"
What Thielman has noticed is that many patients simply walk into the hospital without a referral from the GP, while they turn out to be COVID-positive. This is dangerous for the staff but also for other patients. “If you have complaints, first contact your doctor. Don't just come to the hospital,” emphasizes Thielman, “so that we can take measures to prevent further contamination. In this way, several patients in different wards have already been infected, we cannot afford that,” says Thielman.
The A&E nurse also asks whether patients want to truthfully fill in the form they must fill in when registering to obtain more clarity about their complaints. “It turns out that the patients do not fill out this questionnaire fairly. Usually, the truth only comes out later in a conversation with the nurse,” says Thielman.
Appeal: be honest
This questionnaire is intended to filter out possible COVID patients so that the necessary measures can be taken to prevent further infections. Thielman: “This system only works if people are honest”. The A&E nurse therefore calls on everyone to fill in this list truthfully.