Doctors union warns: “Covid wards begin to fill, especially in the South”

the rise of new cases of coronavirus in Italy it is causing a steady increase in hospital admissions. And those who work in the room begin to give the first warnings, because the situation could quickly get worse. THE Covid departments ordinary “begin to fill up, especially in South, and this is a sign that should not be underestimated ”, he explains Carlo Palermo, the secretary of the major of unions of Italian hospital doctors, theAnaao-Assomed. These departments, he adds, “are filling up because more and more people arrive here. numerous positive patients that they cannot carry out the period of isolation at home. These are patients in most cases stable or with mild symptoms and therefore would not need hospitalization, but cannot remain on their own accommodation, when the right conditions do not exist. “The point, he points out,” is that the necessary sanitary hotels for these patients and this is leading to a jam departments “.

If, in fact, with the current figures, “Italian hospitals can at least endure for 5 months and at this moment the situation is manageable “, the scenario could change:” If we were to witness a exponential increase cases such as is happening in other countries such as France then the hospital system would have a seal of no more than 2 months“, Still warns Palermo. An alarm that was also reiterated the same day by Alessandro Vergallo, national president of the Association Aaroi-Emac (anesthetists me resuscitators): “We must try to imagine in perspective what today’s photography will be like. In 3 weeks. The number of people in intensive care tells us one thing: in little more than a week we spend 200 to about 450. They are indeed duplicate in this period of time. The number is relatively low, but it shows that we are not dealing with a linear curve, but with an initial exponential curve, that’s the risk. “

If you went through 5 thousand almost from daily contagion to more than 10 thousand as in France, notes Palermo Talking toAnsa, “The collapse of the first trench anti-Covid hospital, because hospitals are not prepared to face an exponential epidemic ”. “Already now – he warns – we are beginning to register critical issues, since poor health personnel and of structures that do not always guarantee differentiated paths ”. Own of staff shortage Vergalo spoke to the show ‘The entrepreneur and others‘ his Cusano Italy Tv: “Today in Italy we have about 18 thousand anesthetists me resuscitators, for 10 years we have reported a shortage of at least 4 thousand units. So far we have dealt with these deficiencies with overtime, even unpaid, with grueling work shifts“.

The problem of the “lack of hospital health personnel – Palermo confirms – is not a new problem. We have inherited from the past already a shortage of 6 thousand doctors determined by blocking the turnover. But now, with the pandemic, the situation is worsened because the increase in beds in intensive and sub-intensive care obviously also requires an increase in health and medical personnel employee. It would be necessary – he emphasizes – the hiring of at least another 4 thousand doctors“To date, says Palermo,” we have registered a general shortage of around 10,000 doctors: in the last few months, around 5 thousand hires, but these are fixed-term contracts, precarious the free professional. The problem, therefore, has not been resolved at its roots and the suffering situation in the hospitals persists ”.

But it is not only the staff that is the sore point. Even the hospital facilities are not always adequate to cope with the pandemic: “Many hospitals They’re Old, maybe built more than 50 years ago. This makes it impossible today in various nosocomial structures to prepare the foundations differentiated paths Covid and not Covid. “In short,” there are critical issues that need to be addressed immediately, preparations in the event that the number of infections increases significantly: with an exponential increase, hospitals would go crazyWhile if the increase in cases remains constant with current figures, we still have a fairly long period of stability ”.

The risk, underlines Vergallo (president of Aaroi-Emac), “is high especially in the regions that have not faced theinitial pandemic wave. This is a real second wave so we send the message to keep a lot of attention“It is a wave that” has a lower peak in numbers only because all the social containment measures have been implemented in the meantime. It is clear that a rise was to be expected with the recovery, but this does not mean guard down“, Urges the expert. What is the situation in Italy today in the positions of intensive care? “We had just over 5,000 in the pre-pandemic phase, those that were activated were actually used in most affected regions. We understand that they have also been implemented in the Center-South, but in the South in particular we have no knowledge that there has been an actual implementation that corresponds proportionally to the population density. The government’s goal was to reach 8,700 seats to which should be added about 4 thousand sub-intensive which can be transformed if necessary, but we are talking about a plan on paper which will take a long time ”, he explains in Cusano Italy Tv.

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