And the morgue isn't the only thing that's full to capacity - currently the COVID beds in the hospital are maxed out - with 10 ICU hospitalisations. And as we've reported before, the hospital had to enter into emergency mode and phase 3 of its COVID plan because of the number of hospitalizations for the virus. And with more hospitalizations comes more overworked health staff. The acting CEO spoke about the stress that the hospital and its workers are under.
Timothy Seguro, Acting CEO, KHMH
"Our capacity for COVID positive patients is 23 beds. Right now we have, 24 was the last time we checked with statistic but probably we have one or two more admissions since then so we're already in excess of our capacity and then alongside the COVID unit we also have the PUI unit which also works in tangent and that unit is also stressed because we have room for seven and we're around 5,6 usually."
"When we go into emergency mode, those persons that would have access to the clinics and to elective surgeries, all those persons are placed on hold and we have to concentrate our efforts on the care of those patients in the COVID and the PUI area. So that's where the inconvenience comes in for the public. For our staff, it means we have to be working excess hours. I mean the average amount of hours the nurses and physicians are working are among 60-70 hours per week and not all of these staff claim overtime, they're doing it out of their own will and we could never say thank you enough to them."
