PM: Govt secures $120 m to further improve Harrison’s Point

BRUSSELS – Less than a year into its operation, the island’s main coronavirus hospital at Harrison’s Point, St Lucy, is set for an upgrade, Prime Minister Mia Mottley revealed Thursday,

Government has secured a $120 million loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union-owned institution, to help improve the facility’s care of COVID-19 patients, she told journalists in a news briefing from the Belgian capital.

Mottley said: “You see that place called Harrison’s Point – we are about to get a loan from the European Investment Bank for US$60 million, some of which would be retroactively applied to the money spent to convert Harrison’s Point last February-March.

“That loan has exceedingly generous terms because there is a five-year moratorium, in other words, we don’t pay anything for the five years, then it is a 20-year loan. So the first five years you pay nothing and the 15-years remaining you pay but I think we’re paying about 1.25 per cent and anybody who knows anything that is like the kind of rates we pay at the IMF [International Monetary Fund] which is almost next kin to nothing compared to the 10 and 13 per cent we were paying when we were going to the markets under the last government.”

Further renovations had been made to Harrison’s Point with an increase in the number of beds, she added.

“We have completed the conversion of the tertiary building at Harrison’s Point,” said the Prime Minister. “We’ve not yet received the oxygen plants for there but we are using oxygen bottles and concentrators until the plants come in. I believe the shipping for those will be in a week or so and there was a delay on the medical gas devices because of a breakdown in supply and logistics globally. Without prejudice to that, Dr [Corey] Forde and his team have given us the assurance that they are in a position still to meet the needs.

“That tertiary building is now a kind of primary, secondary. So we have the original primary that has 38 beds, we have the original secondary that we turned into a primary facility with dedicated oxygen capacity and that was another 42 beds and now we have this new tertiary where the downstairs floor will have 48 beds with dedicated oxygen capacity again and upstairs will be a kind of new secondary with 56 beds that will not have the dedicated oxygen supply of downstairs but they will have at least 10 of the 56 beds with oxygen concentrate being used.”