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To understand what “border hospitals” means, I had to be there last night Pistoia. At 6 p.m., the San Jacopo emergency room was closed. For days, hospitalizations for Covid pneumonia have been occurring at a rate of about thirty a day and the facility is now full. It should reopen this morning at 9, unless otherwise ordered. Meanwhile, nighttime emergencies, a not-too-remote scenario in a city of 90,000, will be diverted to Careggi in Florence. They are 35 kilometers and can make a difference. Pistoia is certainly not the only red light flashing on the map of Italian hospitals at risk of ending up in the second wave.
Beds in the church
Instead of Pistoia, you could go to Orbassano, in Piedmont. The San Luigi hospital, with 378 seats, is close to full. For this reason, the chairs in the conference room were unscrewed and the chapel benches stacked against the wall. And so they were made another 74 beds. Not a single one had been busy until last night, but if the flow of shelters doesn’t stop, we’ll get there soon. Perhaps very soon, when admissions in the region exceed 25% of the peak of the first wave. Even in Latina they are willing to do the same. The tabernacle and the sacred furnishings have already been moved of the Chapel of Santa Maria Goretti. Although for now it has been preferred to win another ten beds by setting up a tent in the parking lot in front of the emergency room.
The new Codogno
The most delicate case, however, seems to be that of Saint Gerard of Monza. “We are Codogno at the moment,” says Mario Alparone, general manager of the health company. The capacity, 450 seats, 48 of them in intensive care, is close to the limit. But above all, 340 out of 3,000 doctors and nurses test positive The hospital has asked military doctors for help, so far to no avail. And also to the hospitals of Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona, from where several Covid patients from the first wave had arrived. But for now it has only come from Brescia a little help with 10 transfers. In that “Codogno we are” there is an even more worrying sign of the only hospital close to collapse. During the first wave, there were several areas of the country with a low intensity infection, willing to help those who had an unsustainable number of hospitalizations. This time, with the pandemic galloping across the country, there is a risk that there is less room for that solidarity, including health solidarity, which it did long before the summer.
118 in Milan
The situation of the hospitals in Naples is also critical. And the images of the lines of cars waiting in Cotugno, with the nurses doing pre-triage at the window along the queue and even bringing in some oxygen dolls. While after the worrying boom in the second half of October, the hospitalization situation in Milan seems to have stabilized. At high levels, they cannot last a month. But at least the curve no longer rises exponentially. Calls to 118 I’m basically just for Covid. And hospitals have completed the conversion of their beds, with Sacco, for example, now 70% dedicated to this pathology. However, this can also be a problem.
The other patients
Inevitably the conversion removes beds from the other departments, to the sick whom we now call “conventional.” The case was raised by the Italian Society of Neurology, which wonders what “will happen to people affected by a stroke.” Also because these days we have focused on the tables of Agenas, the Regional Agency for Health Services, which gives us the percentage of beds occupied by Covid patients, region by region. Yesterday we were 34% in intensive care and 49% in medical areas. But this does not mean that the other places are free. They are simply occupied by “conventional” patients. With addition, the limit is sometimes not touched but is exceeded.
November 9, 2020 (change November 9, 2020 | 22:57)
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