MUSCAT: As the Sultanate of Oman battles rising Covid incidence, a three-month-old baby has become the first infant in the country to be put on a ventilator due to being infected with COVID-19, local Sultan Qaboos University Hospital announced yesterday.
“We have received children infected with COVID-19 earlier, but this case is considered the first because the child is on a ventilator,” said Dr. Badr Nasser Al Ghailani, Head of the Intensive Care Department at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital.
He alerted that the child does not take the appropriate amount of oxygen even with the machine. “We try to remove the child from the machine, but the child’s body is small and does not have the ability to depend on herself for breathing,” he added.
100 per cent occupancy in hospitals
“The total number of patients at ICU has exceeded 250, and this number has not been seen before,” said Dr. Saif bin Musabah, Senior Consultant at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital.
“The situation in the university hospital is like the situation in the rest of the hospitals in the regions of the Sultanate, where the occupancy rate in intensive care beds is almost 100 per cent, and sometimes we have to transfer patients from the hospital to other hospitals in case they need a ventilator.”
Separately to report today from another GCC country, the Saudi police have arrested 10 persons infected with COVID-19 for violating the isolation rules, a security official said, as the kingdom stepped up efforts to curb the spread of the disease.
The 10 Covid infected men were arrested in the governorates of Jeddah and Al Taif for infringing quarantine instructions after they had tested positive for coronavirus, a spokesman for police in the Mecca region added
