Grenadians urged to stop making COVID prank calls to hospital
SAINT GEORGE'S, Grenada - 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 which she says is occurring in the midst of a pandemic with the number of persons seeking care.
She warns that because of prank calls someone in need of urgent care can be deprived of service.
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, no one is there.
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. Staff have become ill with COVID which has led to some strain in the system.
The Acting Director of Medical Services says within the hospital services 32 nurses, 16 physicians along with a number of 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 though raised concerns about Grenada’s vaccination numbers which he says appears to have stalled on 32 per cent full 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 for the month of January there has been a steady decline on a daily basis of persons coming forward to be vaccinated.
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