Update on Covid 19, St Luke Hospital

Dear Friends,

From March 16th to September 28th,  St Luke Hospital's  "Center for Acute Respiratory Infections" welcomed 1376  patients, 95% of whom had Covid 19 symptoms.

Of these 1376, 958 were serious enough to need hospitalized admission, and the remaining 418 were successfully cared for as outpatients.

Of the 958, 559 were men (58%) and 386 were women (42%).

Among the 958 hospitalized patients, 193 did not survive their illness, and in fact, 109 of these were either dead on arrival, or died shortly after arrival.

This shows that their illness was already in a critical phase in the community, before they came to us. 

We were saddened and shocked by each death, and continue to pray for those who died and their families.

These 109 deaths are considered "non institutional" in terms of reporting deaths and death rates.

Our overall mortality rate (for all who came for help either outpatient or inpatient) is 14% (the number who died divided by the number of people received at the Center). 

This means the overall survival rate was 86%.

If you remove the 109 who died before we could give them any serious help, the overall mortality rate is 6%, or 94% survival rate.

The mortality for hospitalized patients is 20% (the number who died divided by the number of people admitted.)   

The true institutional death rate would not included those who died on arrival or shortly after, and is 9%.

Among those who died, 64% (124 people) had another major illness aside from their respiratory distress (diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and asthma, in this order of frequency).

The remaining 36% of those who died (64 people) had no other identifiable associated illness.

The above are statistics for the Center. (Not all were able to be tested for COVID 19).

Here is the information on those who tested positive for Covid 19, in the figures above:

The total was 594 Covid 19+ people, and of these 65% were male (388) and 35% were female (206).

Of the total dead, 47 were confirmed Covid 19 positives, and of these 70% were men (33), and 30% were women (14).

The death rate of cases able to be confirmed positive was 8%.

This also means, we had 92% survival rate of those confirmed with Covid 19.

A final rundown:

1376 patients were welcomed

418 were cared for as outpatients

193 died

33 were transferred to a center that had mechanical ventilation as an option

54 left to seek traditional treatments

7 are still in our care

671 went home to continue their lives.

We will look forward to another moment, when we have had a chance to ponder this whole experience with our intelligence and in our hearts,

to tell the story without statistics, and as part of a worldwide human odyssey of both tragedy and heroism.

Hat's off to Dr Marc Edson Augustin, Dr Nathalie Colas, Mr. Raphael Louigene and the entire St Luke staff for a spectacular and inspiring job!

Fr Rick Frechette

Port au Prince

October 1, 2020