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Calabria in the red zone, interview with dr. Enzo Amodeo: the head of cardiology at the Polistena Hospital reaffirms the scientific-health reality of the Region, “absolutely inconsistent” with the red zone
Calabria returns to the red zone as of Monday, March 29: the election of Minister Speranza has provoked the anger of citizens who do not understand the reasons for such an extreme measure in the face of an epidemiological situation that fortunately remains contained. To confirm doubts and perplexities about the choice of the minister is Dr. Enzo Amodeo, esteemed cardiologist of international fame, today head of cardiology at Polistena hospital. To the StrettoWeb microphones, Amodeo it is simple as always and does not send them to say: “In the state of the art, for those interested in local medicine and for those who are perfectly aware of the potential of hospitals, in Calabria the intensive care occupancy rate is 22%, while to declare a red area as Region, the alert threshold should be higher than 30%. The rate of occupied beds in the medical area is equal to 35%, while the red alert shoots up to 40%. Therefore, Calabria currently does not have an alert threshold for bed occupancy, neither in the medical area nor in intensive care. Furthermore, analyzing the contagion data, Calabria has a particularly low incidence rate, only 132 new cases per week per 100,000 inhabitants. It is a very important piece of information because it proportions the level of contagion in the territory when relating it to the population, and therefore it is apt to understand the progress of the pandemic. The threshold to enter the red zone is 250 new cases per week per 100,000 inhabitants, of which Calabria is fortunately far behind. The same Minister Speranza announced yesterday the return to the orange zone of Lazio, which in fact has an incidence of 217 new cases per week, below the threshold of 250 in the red zone, but considerably higher than those of Calabria. I have listed all these data because they serve to give a scientific reason for the non-applicability of the red zone in Calabria, which should still be in orange. I wonder if there are other reasons why Calabria should be considered a red zone again despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence, and I hope that we will repent and back off as soon as possible in such a serious and unfair election. In fact, we must remember that Calabria has a very fragile economic fabric, so the declaration of the red zone further weakens our land: the only exponential growth that we see every day is that of the poverty rate, determined not by the virus itself but from the unscientific choices made by politics“.
However, last autumn, Minister Speranza himself sent the army to Calabria for the field hospitals and Emergency for the tent cities, precisely to prevent the Region from being in the red zone due to the few available beds.
“In fact, we should ask ourselves how all those operations carried out with the aim of improving assistance to the Calabrian population have been used: if the red zone is declared again today, it means that they have completely failed. And those who manage health in Calabria have failed, that is, the commissioners sent by the Ministry of Health. They built tent cities and field hospitals that didn’t help, as we have always said on StrettoWeb in unsuspecting times. Gino Strada, with the honesty that characterizes him, said recently after the disassociation of Calabria, that those tent cities were useless. However, they are structures that have involved considerable expenses for the technological supplies and the necessary furniture. The problem is that from Rome they do not know the health situation in Calabria, they do not know the functionality of the structures and they do not know the potential of the hospitals. No one knows yet -and we have seen it in the delirious statements of the former commissioner ad acta Cotticelli- the number of beds available in intensive care, the potential of hospitals is unknown, and the little reference that is made is made to central hospitals , which are Covid hospitals. Among these hospitals there is today a situation of suffering only in Cosenza, which is the only city for which a red zone could be hypothesized. In the Reggio area the government of Mexico has been in “scenario 1” for three and a half monthsHowever, they turned the Gioia Tauro hospital into a Covid hotel. I wonder what the conversion was for, I would like to know how many performances have been made. The only certainty is that those few doctors who were in the cardiology hospital of GIoia Tauro have been diverted to another place so that today the cardiology services of Gioia Tauro are carried out by the Polistena hospital. Patients are continually transferred by ambulances, resulting in increased costs for the health system and the inability to use the means when needed for emergencies. So the insult adds to the damage. Calabria, as ordered, beyond the unique case of Cosenza where there really is a niche of suffering, it does not have any characteristics to be placed in the red zone.“.
Perhaps we could have acted differently, declaring the red zone only in the areas most affected by infection and hospitalizations?
“The spread of the virus is now defined as a pandemic, but there are particularly critical areas that we could define as endemic areas in the context of the pandemic. In the sense that in some cities and in some places, in some territorial districts, the incidence is greater and as has been done in the past, diversification must be made between the different cities, municipalities and provinces, to avoid making a beam of all the grass and make even more suffering those areas in which we should focus more. These are the famous surgical closures that we have been talking about in vain for a long time, now more than a year. What good is it to shut down an entire country, an entire region, or an entire province if the outbreaks are well localized in certain geographic areas? Nor am I referring to municipalities and cities, because in some cases they are neighborhoods. It would be enough to isolate those“.
And instead, not only does Calabria return to the red zone, but in the three days of Easter it will be all over Italy again.
“I can also understand the choice if it arises as a deterrent to avoid the influx of relatives who come from abroad, but it is a measure that compromises the psycho-physical state of people: the impossibility of being together at particular moments in life such as Easter or Christmas . Holidays are very painful, and we are no longer talking about an isolated sacrifice that could also have been accepted in an emergency. This is the second consecutive Easter closed, between April 25 and May 1, All Saints, Christmas. Being divided and isolated at parties is becoming the norm. Those who live in contact with people in need of medical care are aware of the difficulties of the elderly but especially of children, people who go to the doctor for a consultation in particular complain that with these violent restrictions there is an increase in metabolic diseases. You live badly and you live worse. I continue to argue, and these data are supported by what has been extrapolated from European registries, that patients with acute heart disease often do not access hospital care for fear of contagion and all this leads, fortunately in rare cases, to death at home, and in many other cases unfortunately much more frequent, the late diagnosis that will have invalidating results. The prognosis will get worse and we will have more and more patients with heart disease outcomes that have now become irreversible. The real accounts, alas, we will do them later.“.
Vaccines can represent the light at the end of the tunnel: what is the situation like?
“In this too, unfortunately, we find delusional behavior in the administration of vaccines: people are strongly disoriented. Doctors receive on average more than 50 phone calls a day, they are overwhelmed with requests but do not know how to get around. I think it was good to vaccinate health personnel first, I challenge you to find a figure from another professional category with more deaths from Covid. It is a choice of respect for the medical profession, but it is also a guarantee for patients with any pathology who know that they can count on the care of hospitals without having to fear the presence of outbreaks in hospitals as was the case last year. . However, after having vaccinated health workers, it is necessary to focus on the elderly and people at risk, therefore those with many comorbidities, because having more diseases together means having much higher risks. Obviously in this phase a fundamental role will be played by the family doctor who generally knows the characteristics of the patient.“.
Do you want to send a message to Minister Speranza?
“What can I say? We have lost hope! I believe that another attempt is being made, among other unsuccessful things, to militarize Calabria. Once again, perhaps, the best solution would be to take Calabrian hands off and hand it over to the Calabrians. If we are wrong, we will die for our own faults and not for the faults of others.“.
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