Grenadians urged to stop making COVID prank calls to hospital
Imagine sitting in your home only to look outside and see an ambulance has arrived to respond to a COVID-19 case in your household, but there is none. That is because someone made a prank call about your home. This is what the ambulance service in Grenada has been dealing with and the authorities are urging the public to stop this practice.
Acting Director of Medical Services Dr Tyhiesia Donald says the hospital’s emergency services has received prank calls, a sad development that she says is occurring amid a pandemic with the number of persons seeking care.
She warns that someone in need of urgent care can be deprived of service because of prank calls.
Dr Donald says there have been instances where an ambulance would go to a household, and the persons there don’t have any idea why the ambulance is there.
There are also other instances where an ambulance will go out and when it arrives.
She is appealing to the public to stop this practice because it’s affecting the hospital system and is deploying a service to an area where it is not needed.
This is all occurring as the hospital services deals with a staff shortage. The staff has become ill with COVID, leading to some strain in the system.
The Acting Director of Medical Services says that within the hospital services, 32 nurses, 16 physicians, and much auxiliary staff have been affected by COVID.
Dr Donald was speaking during today’s Post Cabinet media briefing.
Grenada currently has 3,346 active cases and a positivity rate of around 21 per cent.
Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Shawn Charles says since the peak of the infection a week ago, a steady decline has been observed in the positivity rate of cases.
Dr Charles raised concerns about Grenada’s vaccination numbers, which he says has stalled on 32 per cent complete vaccination in the population.
He says just over 36,000 people are fully vaccinated in Grenada, just over 5 per cent are partially vaccinated, and 3.9 per cent of the population have accepted boosters.
So far, for the new year, Grenada has administered 3,182 vaccine doses, broken down into 671 first doses, 575-second doses, and 1,935 boosters.
The Acting CMO noted that there had been a steady decline daily of persons coming forward to be vaccinated for January.
0 Comment