Adam Bihari

Adam Bihari

We asked the doctors about Viktor Orbán’s problems mentioned on Friday. If 32,000 people are hospitalized at the same time, they say several emergency scenarios could come into play, but each will have heavy casualties.

“If this comes true, the apocalypse will come, we will just drown in the patients,” a rural chief doctor told hvg.hu by phone when he heard from us that the prime minister had 32,000 covid patients in hospital on December 10. . predicted by Radio KossuthIn an interview.

Viktor Orbán also spoke that while on November 21, 2,240 intensive beds will be needed, just three weeks later, double, 4480. We do not know how many are currently in the intensive care unit (the data was not provided by the medical director Cecília Müller) , all we know is how many are currently in the hospital (5138) and on ventilators (391).

The numbers mentioned on Friday are the same as the prime minister mentioned on September 21 as twice the worst version out there. At that time, there were the so-called co-infections of 200,000 people, 16,000 hospitalized and 800 ventilated patients. With 400,000 infected patients and 32,000 hospitalized, then only

calculated for safety what health has to endure.

But now that may be the reality. If the proportion of active infected and hospitalized remains the same for December, we estimate that there may be 450,000 infected (confirmed) people at home at the same time, which is a bit higher than Orbán mentioned.

The number announced by Orbán will be an explosive charge in an area where, even without a corona virus, there have been previous closures for various reasons. Another problem is that while 20 percent of those infected were hospitalized in the spring, that number could drop, as there was still enough capacity at that time to accommodate those who were not seriously ill.

We will see in a month whether the Hungarian health system can really bear this burden. The doctors we interviewed say it won’t.

In our morning article, doctors and nurses told us that patients are already overcrowded in designated epidemiological hospitals, while more and more members of the care staff are becoming infected and leaving work. However, when our article was published, 5,489 coronavirus patients were seen in the hospital on Friday morning. If the Prime Minister is right, it will be six times more in just one month.

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“We are transforming into a military hospital, it is not pleasant, but it has been like this before,” says the doctor already quoted at the beginning of the article, who has had to change departments in his hospital several times before to expand Covid care in its place. According to him, not only 30, but 25 thousand people infected by Covid cannot be treated in Hungarian hospitals, at least if the same segregation rules remain in force as now.

This is not the first time intensive classes have been filled. Three years ago, the national medical director in a letter instructed health institutions not to send patients who needed a ventilator to Budapest because all intensive care departments for children in the capital were full. At that time, the problem was that there was a sharp increase in the number of babies and young children with bronchiolitis (viral bronchitis) who needed immediate ventilation.

Two years ago, the entire municipality of Nógrád was left without intensive care, when the intensive care units of the Salgótarján and Balassagyarmat hospitals were also full of patients, due to the influenza epidemic.

Now, however, the situation is different, as not only intensive care units can be filled, but even intensive care units may not be in the first round. “Most of the deaths are also not happening intensively now, but let’s say in Covid internal medicine because there is no constant observation, there are not enough people. Suddenly, the nurse comes in, with 10 to 20 people alone and sees that one of the patients is dead, ”says a doctor.

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However, if the prime minister’s prediction comes true, more scenarios could come into play, according to the doctors we spoke with. One is that basic care is simply cut off, but that is not a viable option because it could cost people more lives than the epidemic itself. The other is that they relax the segregation rules, which means that covid and non-covid patients will be able to end up in the same room because they simply cannot fit in any other way. It’s still about securing the beds, however, but at least as important, and even more importantly, who will be standing next to the beds. “There is no fairy tale, GPs will also have to be requested, there cannot be a dentist who activates the ventilator buttons.”

The third aspect is the distribution of care, that is, triazination, which will be a cruel task for doctors. After all, it is necessary to decide who needs more care, in extreme situations, who is curable and who should be given up so that they can help those who have more possibilities.

Furthermore, Viktor Orbán’s figures do not include those who may be hospitalized for complications from the flu epidemic. Here, however, we may be more fortunate. In the southern hemisphere, the flu epidemic fell short this year due to the introduction of strict hygiene measures due to the coronavirus, so experts also expect a low number of patients here.


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