A senior Health Ministry official said on Wednesday that Phnom Penh hospitals were currently at capacity for handling Covid-19 patients, and new patients would be sent to Kandal and Kampong Speu provinces while the ministry prepares more space for them.
Or Vandine, the ministry’s spokesperson and a secretary of state, said some Phnom Penh patients had been sent to the Chey Chumneas Referral Hospital in Kandal because the capital’s hospitals were full.
“They are full and they were taken to Takhmao city,” Vandine said.
The ministry was preparing the Kampong Speu provincial hospital to receive Covid-19 patients, and other locations would also be made available, she said.
“It is OK. It is being considered and don’t be so worried,” she said.
According to the ministry’s update on Covid-19 numbers this morning, seven Phnom Penh patients were sent to Kandal.
Vandine would not give a number of how many people had been tested since the latest “February 20” outbreak over the weekend.
The country currently has more than 150 active cases of Covid-19, the most it has seen so far, following the cluster’s emergence. It has been linked to Chinese women who left quarantine at Phnom Penh’s Sokha Hotel with the help of two security guards.
Chan Vichet, deputy director of the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital, said his hospital could no longer accept Covid-19 patients because its rooms were full.
“It is full and there are no beds left, because the remaining [beds], we are keeping for emergency rescue,” Vichet said.
“In the past, we were only able to accommodate just over 10 patients, but with the February 20 event, we reserved one building for more patients,” he said.
Huot Chan Yuda, director of National Center for Tuberculosis and Leprosy, said his hospital could only accommodate 54 Covid-19 patients, and it already had 50.
Chan Yuda added that rooms at the hospital take up to six people, and 30 doctors were working on handling the Covid-19 patients.
“We cannot get anymore because it is full,” he said.
As of Wednesday, Cambodia has recorded 633 cases of Covid-19, of which 476 have recovered.
Since the latest outbreak, schools in Phnom Penh and Kandal have been closed, museums, theaters and nightclubs shuttered, and more than 40 hotels, apartments and other locations closed off in Phnom Penh and Preah Sihanouk province due to suspected links to the cluster.
