[ad_1]
During the initial wave of the pandemic, clinics cleared basements to accommodate additional beds and governments urged manufacturers to produce large quantities of lung respirators and masks. There is currently a shortage of equipment, but now health services face another challenge: a shortage of doctors, nurses and medical support personnel, as unprecedented infections sweep across the entire region at once.
Europe is once again becoming a hotbed for the virus. Across the continent, infections have infected more than 5 million people and killed more than 200,000 people. Germany and the Czech Republic reported a record number of new cases last Thursday; the day before, Italy announced the highest daily rate of infections since the start of the pandemic, and Spain became the first country in Western Europe to have more than a million infections.
So far, there are not many seriously ill patients and hospitals are on the mend, but signs of stress are increasing.
In the Czech Republic, the country hardest hit by coronavirus in Europe, Prime Minister Andrei Babich imposed a partial quarantine on Wednesday, warning that the hospital system could no longer hold out early next month.
The government turned to medical students for help and approached doctors working abroad with a request to return home, and hospitals are inviting volunteers and offering part-time jobs to medical staff, cleaners and support staff.
The armed forces are setting up a field hospital in Prague, at which point the US ambassador announced Wednesday that military medical personnel would be called in to help.
“I can’t even imagine what will happen if the number of patients needing intensive care continues to grow,” Peter Sladek, director of a hospital in the hard-hit Moravian town of Uherske Hradiste, told the Czech website Seznam Zpravy. “It’s like a battlefield treatment.”
Although Eastern Europe faces a particular threat due to a persistent lack of funding for the healthcare system (Poland is installing temporary hospitals in stadiums and conference centers), a similar situation has emerged in Belgium.
In the second worst outbreak in Europe, authorities are trying to hire unemployed restaurant workers, retirees and refugees. Right now, when many Belgians are in quarantine, there are far fewer people who could treat and care for the sick than during the first wave of the virus, this spring.
“Now we have far fewer employees in this area, and that is becoming a real problem,” said Jan-Piet Bauwens, vice president of the Estca union.
Belgian medical institutions currently reserve 50%. resuscitation beds available for COVID-19 patients. Some clinics in Brussels and the province of Liège are transferring patients to other hospitals because the patient limit has already been reached.
Of course, the situation is not so complicated everywhere. The UK has so-called ‘Nightingale’ hospitals that specifically treat people infected with coronavirus to help cope with the sudden surge in COVID-19 patients.
Named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, some of them were not used during the first wave of infections, and those that worked only treated a small number of patients.
But even in Germany, which has a lower infection rate than most of its neighbors, concerns are mounting. Currently, 70 percent are full. places in intensive care units, and in the event of an increase in the number of severe COVID-19 patients, other patients may need to be urgently removed.
“If we fail to stop the proportional increase in infections, we don’t know what we will get in the next few weeks,” Susanne Herold, professor of lung infections at the University of Giessen near Frankfurt told ZDF.
In France, the increase in coronavirus cases is putting pressure on resuscitation rooms and staff are already feeling overwhelmed.
French Health Minister Olivier Veran said last Tuesday that the country’s hospitals, in addition to have already reserved 10 billion. EUR for healthcare in 2020 budget, an additional 2.5 billion euros will be allocated. euros.
“The authorities did not learn from the first wave,” said Benoit Labenne, a general practitioner of the Le Rensi commune in the Paris suburbs, who helps local emergency services several times a week.
The Italian government is preparing to expand wards for coronavirus patients. The new premises, installed this year at the Milan and Bergamo fairgrounds, will open in the coming days, with an initial capacity of 200 seats.
The situation is deteriorating notably. In the region around Naples, which largely escaped the first wave, more than a thousand COVID patients were hospitalized, more than the peak reached in April of around 700.
And while hospitals are renovating facilities to treat intensive care patients and preparing the necessary equipment, the biggest problem at the moment is staffing.
“It’s the same as keeping a Ferrari Testarossa in a garage without a driver,” said Bruno Zuccarellis, vice president of the Naples Medical Association. “There are not enough specialists.”
In the city of Getafe, south of Madrid, the number of coronavirus patients in hospitals rose again at the beginning of September. By about the middle of the month, the local clinic was already packed, says Yolanda Caberrro, an anesthesiologist who has been working here for twenty-five years and became infected with a coronavirus at work in March.
“There is a lot of pressure in Madrid to get out of the limitations as soon as possible, prioritizing the economy over the criteria of health professionals and epidemiologists,” he said. “We are convinced over and over again that this is a mistake, because without health we will not have an economy.”
[ad_2]
