Coronavirus: Beds for patients becoming a challenge – GMA

Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr Titus Beyuo, has revealed that beds at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of COVID-19 treatment centres are running out of beds.

According to Dr Beyuo, “it should be a concern that the treatment centres are getting full and the ICUs in particular from what we have taken up, bed availability in these ICUs designated for COVID-19 is becoming a challenge.”

He explained that due to increasing numbers of symptomatic cases reporting to hospitals, pressure on isolation centres is on the low while pressure on treatment centres is growing.

The Ghana Health Service earlier claimed that space for accommodating patients with COVID-19, in terms of beds, treatment and isolation centres are sufficient.

Reacting to that, he told Joynews that “when you go into a treatment centre you have beds for patients who are sick and we have beds for people who need ICU care. In the healthcare system we have a bed turnover and so if somebody reports to you that it was full and this morning it’s not full, both of them could be telling the truth because at the time of the report it might have been full.”

“Now, someone could’ve died, someone might have been discharged and therefore there would be beds. So we shouldn’t discount [the Director General’s] report.”

Dr Beyuo also indicated that the profile of the virus in Ghana has changed, hitting all fabric of the country.

“We are getting to the phase where the disease is reaching to virtually every part of our society,” he said.

“A lot more people who are coming in are having symptoms and that is not surprising because in the initial stage most of our testing was for people in enhanced surveillance.”