“These three hospitals, along with the Communicable Disease Center and the Cuban Hospital, stand at the forefront in fighting Covid-19 in the country,” Dr Ahmed al-Mohamed, acting head of the Intensive Care Unit at the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) explained.
He was attending a press conference on Thursday evening with Dr Abdullatif al-Khal, co-chair of the National Pandemic Preparedness Committee at the Ministry of Public Health and head of Infectious Diseases at HMC.
“The preparations and equipping of hospitals required a boost from the clinical aspect and increasing medical, nursing and auxiliary medical teams, especially in hospitals that were brought into service during the pandemic,” Dr al-Mohamed said.
All the five hospitals have been prepared in the highest standards to face the Covid-19 pandemic. Reviewing their roles, Dr al-Mohamed described some of them as first line.
“When the absorptive capacity of the first line hospitals is completed, the second line of hospitals will be introduced to handle Covid-19 cases. The last line of reserve hospitals include the Hamad General Hospital and the specialised hospitals.
“We hope that we do not reach the stage of activating the last line, but this is the active plan to confront the spread of this disease,” the official outlined.
The acting head of the Intensive Care Unit at the HMC recalled that the preparations in the face of the pandemic in the first line hospitals necessitated an increase in the number of medical and nursing staff and the assistant medical staff on two fronts: the first for non-critical cases, and the second for critical situations.
As for non-critical cases, the beds have been increased in a way that is compatible with the number of those cases, which are more than the critical cases. As for the critical cases, the clinical capacity in the intensive care departments is increased in large numbers, he said.
If the number of beds before the Covid-19 pandemic used to be 2,250 in Hamad hospitals, subsequently they were increased to about 5,000 in response to the situation.
There has been a significant increase in the absorptive capacity at Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital where all the units were changed into those for intensive care, an unusual and unprecedented step that required a great effort to achieve.
Hazm Mebaireek General Hospital was equipped with 221 beds to receive critical cases, and it still has 40% beds in reserve. The Mesaieed Hospital and Ras Laffan Hospital, which were both prepared from scratch, also have 40% if beds each to spare.