St John needs more ambulances for Covid emergencies

By LULU MARK
ST John Ambulance is attending to an increasing number of Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases in five provinces, hence, more ambulances are needed, an official says.
St John chief executive officer Matt Cannon said the current normal workload was around 350 medical emergencies in a week, but Covid-19 emergencies had added onto that.
He said in this third surge of Covid-19, St John was attending to between 10 and 20 respiratory cases (of which about 10 were Covid-19) in a 24-hour period.
Cannon said the demand for the emergency service was increasing in Port Moresby, Central, Morobe, East New Britain and Chimbu.
“Each (respiratory) case takes about two hours and requires ambulances to be decontaminated,” he said.
“The decontamination process takes about 30 minutes, plus one hour of drying.
“The St John Ambulance Service is seeing a steady increase in cases from July to September in Port Moresby, Central, Lae, Kokopo and Kundiawa. There is a need for more ambulances in town and rural areas to support health services.”
Cannon said the challenge in Lae, Kokopo and Kundiawa was with 4WD ambulances.
He said “currently, Lae and Kokopo had only full-time 2WD station wagons; 4WD ambulances are the only way we can reach patients in rural areas”.
Meanwhile, Cannon said 15 patients were admitted at the Nightingale Taurama Aquatic Centre (Covid-19) care centre with three more expected yesterday.
He said the centre was opened last Friday and was operating to handle mild (and some moderate) Covid-19 patients in partnership with the Port Moresby General Hospital.