Crisis in ambulance in Sofia: COVID patients wait for an ambulance for 28 hours, 33-year-old man died (REVIEW)

Record levels of coronavirus infection in our country. The ambulance in the “overheated” capital. People wait for hours for an ambulance, and for some the delay has been fatal.

The tests showed nearly 2,900 new infections. Thus, the active cases registered in our country are close to 30 thousand.

It is increasingly difficult to find free beds in hospitals, although there are about 2,500 people housed, which according to documents is 1/3 of the capacity.

Emergency doctors in the capital received hundreds of calls for COVID patients just for their last duty.

However, a small number of these patients are hospitalized. Among the reasons, there were no vacancies in the hospitals.

Emergency crews cannot reach all directions in time, people wait hours for an ambulance.

A 33-year-old man couldn’t wait for her and died. He had been home with a coronavirus for a week. Worse Friday. Around 6:30 pm, his brother called an ambulance. He also calls a private ambulance, where they tell him that they cannot guarantee that they will find a place in a hospital, so it is better for him to find one and transport him.

“My experience this week shows that making a commitment to transport without a place is a risk of walking all over Sofia. We have experience with a family who walked in 5 hospitals,” said Anton Dimov, manager of Medic Trans Assist.

After a few hours of calling the hospitals in Sofia, the man’s relatives managed to find a free bed.

“We feel powerless because we call all possible hospitals if we can take him, not wait for 112, which is obviously very difficult, but still we called them many times to tell them that it got worse with every minute. A minute passed, there was a conversation even with him personally ”Dimitar Hadjiev, brother of the deceased, said by phone.

Once a bed is found, the private ambulance arrives.

“I was at the address for 10 hours and 5 minutes, I found the child on the floor, without breathing, without cardiac activity, the roommate and the brother were performing resuscitation, I got involved with help,” says Anton Dimov.

Thus, while waiting, the 33-year-old man with COVID-19 lost the battle for life. After a new call to 112, an ambulance arrived, but to determine death.

“Let’s hope that no one else does something like that and that people have one thing in mind about this COVID, not that they think it is harmless,” said the brother of the deceased.

The Sofia Emergency Service explained that they could not.

“We have been working like this for weeks: in our last 12-hour duty we had 418 calls, 200 COVID, 16 hospitalizations. I mean we will pay for collective irresponsibility individually with human lives,” said Katya Sungarska, spokeswoman for ambulances in Sofia.

There are also infected doctors in the hospital. And people keep calling for non-emergencies, says the ambulance.

There are patients in the capital who wait for an ambulance much longer. This Saturday we spoke with a family in which the woman has COVID-19 and has gotten worse. When we filmed the conversation with her husband, it had been 28 hours since an ambulance was called and there were none.

On Friday around 10:00 am, the husband of the woman with a coronavirus called an ambulance because it was getting worse. Three hours later, there is still no ambulance.

“At 1 in the afternoon I called again because I don’t know what is going on, if an ambulance will come or not, they called me by ambulance from 112 and told me that once they signed me up they would come. They called me and explained that they would not come because there were no empty beds and there was no point in coming, “said Georgi Pavlov.

The man called the coordination center, where they managed to find him a free bed. Then he calls the ambulance again. But an ambulance never came. And 28 hours passed from the first call to her until the recording of this interview.

And another paradox occurs – because we have no way out, it is positive, I am in contact, but we have no right to help, because the personal doctor will not come, an ambulance does not come, my wife is left to chance – to live or not, “says Pavlov .

An ambulance employee for several years, who did not want to show his face, said that in recent days he came to the home 14 hours after the signal was given due to lack of equipment. Evidence of a shortage of hospital beds.

“There is no place. There is no place in any hospital, as they want to say on television. We want to help, we go to the place, but there is nowhere to take it. Now we are going to see how people die,” the official said.

According to the capital ambulance, it is currently the greatest shortage of personnel in its history.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Prof. Kostadin Angelov published a post on Facebook, in which he announced that with legal changes, hospitals that do not want to open beds for coronavirus patients will not be able to work with the Health Insurance Fund, that is. their access to public funding will be suspended.

For more information on how Emergency Relief works in pandemic conditions, watch this Sunday on bTV Reporters.