The current supply of isolation beds was sufficient to face the needs of the local population during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the 80 isolation beds provided by the future Conde S. Januario Hospital expansion will be a welcomed addition to local supply, medical practitioners told MNA.
It was announced last week that the first phase of the main structure construction the future Conde S. Januario Hospital speciality treatment building – which will include an infectious diseases treatment area – is expected to start in the first quarter of next year after the project suffered many delays and plan changes.
The project has a maximum deadline of 730 working days, with a 450-day deadline granted for the completion of the main structure, with the building set to add 80 new isolation beds.
In May of this year, Health Bureau Director, Lei Chin Ion, indicated that the SAR had 232 negative pressure isolation beds available, with some 144 more beds to be added, 80 in the future infectious disease prevention building and 64 in the future Islands District Medical Complex public hospital in Cotai, scheduled to be completed by 2023.
“It is hard to make predictions in public health today as is the case now with Covid-19. The 80 beds will be very useful if, in fact, a pandemic should recur in the near future, taking into account that the new hospital will take a long time before it is actually completed and ready for hospital use,” the President of the Macau Association of Health Doctors, Fernando Gomes.
The building was initially designed as an expansion of the Centro Hospitalar Conde de São Januário with works started after 2004 when the law on the prevention of infectious diseases was enforced.
The project was initially slated to be an eight-storey building occupying 5,565 square metres, hosting 80 nursing rooms with independent air-purifying antechambers and secure double automatic door access.
In 2005, the company of architect and former legislator Eddie Wong Yue Kai – Gabinete de Arquitectura Eddie Wong Limitada – was granted a MOP54 million (US$6.75 million) design contract for the Infectious Diseases Building, administrative building, hospital dormitory and first-phase expansion of public hospital Conde Sao Januário (CHCSJ) by then Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah.
However, as the building exceeded the allowed height limits defined by a 2008 Chief Executive – prompted by height restriction limits defined by the World Heritage buffer zone in the surrounding area of the Guia Lighthouse- the project had to be postponed and redesigned by the office of local architect and Executive Council member.
Residents living near the hospital and legislators also opposed the project and asked for it to be developed in areas with less population density, leaving authorities to focus on a temporary Alto de Coloane infectious disease building, which was completed at the end of 2015 and added 60 new isolation beds.
Foundation works for the Conde S. Januario Hospital infectious diseases treatment building were only initiated in 2018 and are expected to be concluded in December of this year, with the building to also include a surgery area, a laboratory, observation rooms, plus X-ray and computed tomography (CT) equipment.
“We were lucky to have a few infected cases and none of the severity at present. I think it is opportune to have these 80 beds with clinical conditions for root isolation. With [the beds in] Coloane we will be more prepared, being able to free the beds currently from the central building for other internment purposes where there is a shortage,” Dr.Gomes told MNA.
When asked about the current bed supply, the President of the Association of Macau Portuguese Speaking Physicians, Jose Manuel Esteves, inferred that bed supply in the private sector would also be able to complement the supply in the local public sector but noted that the pandemic cases in the SAR were effectively controlled with the means available.
“In the controlled context in which we have been, there has never been insufficient installed capacity. Personally, I always felt perfectly safe in Macau and very few regions have had such good pandemic management as the SAR,” Dr. Esteves told MNA.
No new Covid-19 cases have been reported in Macau for more than 55 consecutive days, with no local transmissions reported for more than 130. A total of 46 confirmed cases were reported, all of which have already left medical care, with treatments carried out either at the Conde S. Januario Hospital or the Alto de Coloane centre.
In any case, Dr. Esteves stressed that response speed and management planning ended up being more important than the number of isolation units available.
“In an uncontrolled context, we could well have 10 or 20 times more installed capacity, which even so would hardly be enough. Responsiveness is measured by the ability to intelligently manage the problem you face,” the APLPM President noted
