Half of beds filled up within a week at new Covid-19 community treatment facility

• About half of 150 available beds at a facility run by Woodlands Health are now filled
• One to two Covid-19 patients at the facility in Tampines are transferred to an acute hospital daily 
• Patients who are moved to this facility are either treated at hospitals first and transferred there when their conditions improve, are sent from nursing homes or from their own homes

SINGAPORE — A week after it started operations to care for Covid-19 patients who have mild or no symptoms but have underlying medical conditions, a new 150-bedder community treatment facility is about half full.

Speaking to the media on Thursday (Sept 30),  Dr Wong Kirk Chuan, chief operating officer of Woodlands Health, added that every day one to two Covid-19 patients are transferred to an acute hospital for further monitoring. Woodlands Health was the healthcare provider appointed to set up the facility.

Patients who are moved to this facility are either treated at hospitals first and transferred there when their conditions improve, are sent from nursing homes or from their own homes after testing positive for Covid-19. 

The facility at Tampines, which was converted from a nursing home, has five floors with three of them now serving patients. It has a capacity of 250 patients if all floors are in use.  

About 100 to 130 staff members are running the treatment facility, with most of them from Woodlands Health. Staff members from the National Skin Centre, Health Promotion Board and Institute of Mental Health have been roped in as well. 

The Ministry of Health (MOH) announced on Sept 19 that it would be setting up these treatment facilities to care for older Covid-19 patients who have mild symptoms and are generally well, but have underlying medical conditions that require closer monitoring. 

Dr Wong said that after Woodlands Health was activated by MOH to set up the facility on Sept 16, his team looked for a suitable location and then started working with technical experts to repurpose a nursing home.

Dr Nicholas Chew, chairman of the medical board at Woodlands Health, said that although the facility is not built to provide the same level of care at hospitals, it is equipped with chest X-ray machines, ultrasound machines and other medical equipment to help nurses and doctors make a diagnosis on whether patients need to be given more appropriate levels of care. 

“We, of course, don't have things like advanced CT scans, MRIs and things like that, which are somewhat unnecessary in a setting like this.” 

Patients’ chronic conditions such as diabetes, dementia and heart issues are monitored regularly to ensure they are under control, Dr Chew added.

Medical staff members also take the patients' pulse, oxygen saturation and blood pressure readings regularly.

As the patients are all 60 years old and above, they tend to have chronic diseases that require rehabilitation work, so geriatric-trained medical staff members, as well as physiotherapists and occupational therapists are also working at the facility. 

Dr Chew said that rehabilitation exercise were designed, at least for those who are able to walk around, to prevent patients from “deconditioning” if they were to just lie on their beds.

“So that, you know, they are engaged on a daily basis, maintain their status so that they don't decondition. So that by the time they are ready to go home, they are still fit and ready for discharge,” he added. 

For patients who are generally well and not bed-bound, they are also able to gather in groups to play games, watch television programmes and chat with each other. 

Dr Chew said that workers at the facility will apply the nationally set criteria in deciding whether patients are fit for discharge, that is, using a combination of their polymerase chain test results and time-based discharge. 

A patient’s expected length of stay is somewhere between 10 and 21 days, depending on their condition upon admission, he added.