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Minister Balban’s Statement - Thursday COVID-19 Briefing

Here’s the full text of the opening statement by the Minister for Health and Care Paul Balban:

Good Afternoon, thank you for joining us once again today for our daily COVID-19 update.

I am joined today by my colleague Albert Isola, Minister for Digital and Financial Services, who will be focusing on aspects relevant to our business community.

I would like to start by running through todays COVID Statistics:

As of this morning at 9:

The total number of swabs taken so far is 1813

Results pending 53

Total Results received 1760

Negative results 1590

Confirmed cases 132

Active cases 27

Recovered cases 105

I will now share our hospital statistics.

In the last 24 hours there have been a total of 31 attendances to A&E of which 11 had symptoms that could be related to COVID 19.

10 of these were swabbed.

There were no admissions to COVID CCU.

There were 5 admissions to COVID John Ward of which 2 had negative swabs and 3 are pending results.

Today we have a total of 378 free beds, between SBH and the Nightingale Facility.

This includes 12 free beds in our COVID CCU, 7 free beds within our non-COVID CCU and 28 free beds within our COVID Ward.

SBH & the Europa Point Hospital Nightingale Facility

Yesterday the GHA received the first consignment of hospital profiling beds which will further increase bed capacity at SBH and the Nightingale Facility.

These beds will bring St Bernard’s acute bed capacity up to 195 from 149 by providing John Cochrane Ward with new profiling beds.

This converts the Elderly Residential Ward to another Acute Ward for the duration of the crisis.

SBH, for all intents and purposes, is now a fully-fledged Acute Hospital at part of our COVID-19 surge preparations. This places Gibraltar in an incredible position to be able to cope in the event of a surge.

80 new beds have been received so far with an additional 40 beds due to arrive by the end of April.

Nightingale has therefore also increased its bed capacity.

28 new profiling beds have been added to the Nightingale Facility bringing the total capacity of Nightingale up to 238.

The New Oxygen Plant at Nightingale is in the process of being commissioned and will be able to provide piped continuous oxygen to 22 patients if we have the need to.

Following its commissioning, the plant will be fully operation before next week.

By the end of April, it is expected that further infrastructure will be completed to be able to provide oxygen to 44 patients in total.

This Oxygen Plant complements our recently commissioned oxygen plant at SBH as recently announced.

Mt Alvernia – Isolation unit completed

Meanwhile at Mt Alvernia, the dedicated isolation unit is due to be completed today providing a further 4 isolation beds.

Following Public Health Advice and as mentioned by Dr Antonio Marin at yesterday’s Press Conference, 67 out of 289 residents were randomly swabbed throughout the ERS sites - including Mt Alvernia, BellaVista and Hillsides.

This helps provide us with very valuable data regarding the status of the residents within the ERS facilities.

I am very pleased to announce that they have all returned negative which is great news and testament to the incredible work that is being done by the ERS Team led by Dr Marin and Susan Vallejo.

CT SCANNER

I am also pleased to announce that a second CT scanner has now been received on a temporary basis providing resilience should the CT Scanner at SBH be out of service for whatever reason.

This portable CT Scan has been located within the MUGA Facility within the Tercentenary Hall Sports Complex.

The Scanner has been powered up and is being commissioned and will be deep cleaned in preparation for its use.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank GibElec, the GHA Technical Team, the GSLA Team and our GHA domestic staff for setting up and preparing this facility.

Swabs – No of swabs carried out – Drive through

The GHA continues swabbing via our Drive Thru facility at Rooke.

So far, a total of 820 swabs have been taken via the Drive Thru facility which continues being a very useful means to test the community and help us gather data in a safe, environment.  

111 Call – Statistics

As of today, there have been over 4500 calls received via the 111 Service and there have been over 1400 submissions on the COVID-19 On-line System Checker.

Laboratory Equipment carried out locally

A total of 180 swabs have already been processes via our in-house laboratory testing equipment since we started our in-house testing on the 9th of April.

Our on-site equipment allows a quick turnaround of tests results.

I would now like to mention the OUTREACH – FAMILY CENTRE

Following the closure of the Family and Community Centre within Mid-Harbours Estate as a result of the COVID prevention measures by the Care Agency, families have had to adjust and adapt their usual routines, which may not have been easy.

As school and work-life have merged within the home environment for many, as a result of the lockdown measures, parents and their children are spending most of their time together under one roof for very long periods of time.

Furthermore, many children and families have had to deal with not seeing their loved family members and friends face-to-face due to social distancing and isolation measures.

This can lead to mounting stress at home and issues associated with the lockdown.

The staff at the Family and Community Centre have now extended its support to parents and carers during this challenging time by way of an Out-Reach Service.

The Family and Community Centre therefore still offers opportunities for families to reach out and receive necessary support if needed.

An additional helpline service has been set up to offer one-to-one support and advice to parents and those with parenting roles.

The team is comprised of trained Parenting Educators, Social Workers and Therapists, who will be able to offer advice on different strategies that may help families build resilience during these difficult times.

The team will also help to link those parents or children in need, to other support services in the community. 

The Family and Community Centre Team can be contacted on 20046386 Monday to Friday, between the hours of 8.45am–4.30pm or on 20042448 after working hours.

Alternatively, the team can be contacted by email on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Donations

I am pleased to announce that donations received to date have now passed £1.5M.

We are most grateful to all those that have contributed so far.

Children’s Health Centre opens tomorrow after decontamination

I will now provide further details following yesterday afternoon’s Press Release confirming an outbreak of COVID-19 at the Children’s Health Centre (CHC) at Europort.

The facility was immediately closed for a deep clean and full decontamination.

This was completed swiftly within hours and the Children’s Health Centre re-opened this morning at 9am as usual.

There are six confirmed cases and one suspected case among GHA staff.

Five of them were sent home and one was admitted to the COVID Ward at St Bernard’s Hospital.

All of them had been working at the Children’s Health Centre and were doing so in the 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms. This suggests that there is likely to have been sustained transmission over a period of several weeks, during which clinics have been ongoing.

Most of the dentists have been doing telephone consultations and had attended to emergency cases only.

Following established infection control practices dental clinics are always deep cleaned after every use and the dentists have worn full PPE throughout.

In order to control the outbreak those in direct contact with those affected have been asked to self-isolate.

A total of eighteen staff members were swabbed and will be tested in-house.

The advice to members of the public, including persons who attended the children’s medical or dental clinics, remains the same.

In the event of showing any symptoms associated with COVID-19 people should call 111 and follow the advice given to them.

CONCLUSION

It is important to stress that Government is taking very seriously all the concerns of the community.

The case at the Children’s Health Centre is proof that although we have done very well as a community in following the advice given to us, COVID-19 is still circulating in Gibraltar and can cause us a great deal of harm to us if we do not keep these efforts up.

Staying indoors has a very direct bearing on the civil liberties that we have been so used to as a community, and we are very aware of these but our health should be of paramount importance at the moment.

Once again, I would like to stress that our success as a community is down to you all; for observing the new rules so well.

We must continue to work together and keep up this great effort to ensure the safety of our loved ones and especially the most vulnerable within our community.

We will restore our community together and become once again the place we have all been used to. But this will still take time and a lot of patience and we will always heed the advice of our Public Health and Medical Professionals.

My heartfelt gratitude once again goes to TEAM GHA, TEAM ERS and TEAM Care Agency for doing such a great job on the health front.

I would also like to mention and thank the Royal Gibraltar Police for making today an extra special day for one of our residents at Dr Giraldi Home who is celebrating his 71st birthday in lockdown, a massive fan of the RGP.

This story will run tonight on GBC News.

Finally:

Please remember to respect and observe the COVID Rules:

Social distancing 

Good hand hygiene - Washing hands for at least 20 seconds

Catch it - Bin it - Kill it