Coronavirus Medellín: mayor’s office has 810 active ICU beds of the 1,000 available – Medellín – Colombia

The most recent report from the Antioquia Health Section indicates that the department has an 81.27 percent occupancy of ICU beds, which indicates that it remains on a hospital red alert, decreed two days ago.

Of the 1,185 ICU beds that the department has, 945 are destined for covid patients. Of these, 768 are occupied.

In the case of Medellín, the municipal mayor’s office indicated that the Ministry of Health is working in an articulated manner with the hospital network to enable the Intensive Care Units (ICU), pending activation.

“Currently, with a cutoff to October 23, of the 1,000 ICU beds installed in the city, 810 are active. Additionally, the General Hospital at its headquarters in the 80, began the process of expanding 40 beds to decongest the low and medium complexity of the city’s emergency services “, reported Andree Uribe, Secretary of Health of Antioquia.

(You may be interested: Will there be restrictions in Antioquia after the hospital red alert?)

The secretary added that in the last hours, the IPS of the city began with processes to activate the ICUs installed in their entities, adding 17 new beds for care: 7 by the Hospital Infantil Concejo de Medellín and 10 by the Hospital General. The goal for this weekend is to enable 13 more to reach 30.

On the other hand, the mayor’s office reported that in the last 48 hours, 28 people with Covid diagnosis entered the Medellín hospital network, from other municipalities.

Of these, 10 were hospitalized in the ICU, while the remaining 18 patients were admitted to the emergency services, hospitalization and Special Care Units (CSU).

(Also read: Controversy over the actual number of ICU beds available in Medellín)

For her part, Lina Bustamante, Secretary of Health of Antioquia, indicated that given the saturation of people in the ICUs of the Aburrá valley, they have already had to send patients to the ICU in the Urabá Antioquia and to the department of Córdoba.“To return to an orange alert, we would have to wait how the occupation of ICU beds behaves, that the contagion curve falls and there are other variables that we have to analyze,” said Bustamante.

For his part, Leopoldo Giraldo, coordinator for the Covid in the Department, indicated that a very strong work must be done to prevent the demand for hospitalization and intensive care services from continuing to rise, thus reducing the burden that the hospital network has today .

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“Today we have two opportunities: the first, which is very important, is the responsibility and individual awareness to have self-care and comply with biosecurity measures and social distancing. There is another measure, which is parallel, and that is that companies Also comply with protocols to prevent the spread of the virus. If we are not able to comply with those two things, what would one expect that we do, we have to go to a third option, which is to apply general restrictive measures such as closures, peak and ID or curfews“Giraldo said.

The most recent report from the authorities indicates that Antioquia has 151,420 positive cases of covid-19, of which 4,386 are active. Medellín and its metropolitan area have 126,189 positive cases (83.3 percent of the departmental total), of which 3,756 are active.

MEDELLIN