Visitation restriction at Infectious Diseases Hospital to be lifted from next week

Persons with infectious diseases are often isolated from their loved ones in an effort to stem further infections, however, with the right protective gear in place, relatives of these persons may soon be able to visit them.

Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony during his daily COVID-19 update on Thursday said as of early next week, relatives of patients housed at the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown, will be able to visit them at the hospital.

Importantly, however, the visitors will be required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) which will be provided to them by the hospital. Other guidelines will be announced before the visit restriction is lifted.

“We have taken a decision that we are changing visitation rules because when we only had COVID-19 patients we were not allowing persons to visit patients in the hospital.”

“We will be allowing visitation (and) these rules would go into effect from early next week and we would elaborate more on the rules, who can visit, what are the things they must do when they visit…they will have to use PPEs which we will provide to them,” the Health Minister said.

He explained that this decision follows careful consideration for the health and safety of both the visitors and the patients. Since the hospital was commissioned in September 2020, persons were not permitted to visit their relatives at the hospital.

Further, the minister said that since the hospital was built, many patients with other infectious diseases have been treated at the hospital and there are fewer COVID-19 patients there now.

“Initially we built the hospital to house COVID-19 patients. We have been putting other patients at the hospital so it’s not just COVID-19 patients now, but you have other patients with various kinds of infectious disease and so because of that and we have very low numbers of COVD-19 patients. Right now we only have two COVID-19 patients,” he said.

Just recently, two persons who were infected with monkeypox were treated and discharged from the hospital after recovering.