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The Undersecretary of State for Health guaranteed, this Wednesday, that the Amadora-Sintra oxygen network did not collapse during Tuesday night, warning that “what happened must be interpreted correctly.”
“What happened was not a lack of oxygen, but rather, of the 350 hospitalized patients, more than 150 were on non-invasive ventilation,” he began by explaining this morning at the inauguration of the Coimbra rear unit. “Invasive ventilation, high oxygen flows, around 40 to 60 liters per minute. Obviously, having many patients with this oxygen pressure will lead to increased restrictions and pressure within the structure itself, ”he explained.
As a way to avoid that the network could not respond to hospitalized patients, the board of directors of the Professor Doutor Fernando Fonseca Hospital chose to “preventively transfer patients to other hospitals” of the Regional Health Administration of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo (ARS LVT).
At the same time, Lacerda Sales praised the collaboration between the public and private sectors in the patient transfer operation, stating that Hospital da Luz will continue to receive patients who were hospitalized today in Amadora-Sintra. “Almost all ARS Lisbon hospitals collaborated in the transfer of the 48 patients,” he stressed.
Asked whether the Government is prepared to face other similar future situations in hospital units, given that the number of hospitalized in nursing and intensive care continues to increase, the official considered that the Government has “the humility to recognize the difficulties” but do your best always so that these situations do not happen again ”.
Opening of the 31-bed Coimbra rear unit for medium and low complexity patients
“We never hide the difficulties,” he said. “We have to assure the Portuguese that these difficulties are overcome, and so far we have shown that these difficulties have been overcome. We will certainly continue to make these efforts to guarantee this response ”, he emphasized.
In Coimbra, the response capacity for Covid and non-Covid patients has expanded fourfold, now that the rear unit has installed 31 additional beds for patients with medium and low care. Lacerda Sales guarantees that the opening of this new unit did not come “too late”, but at a time “in proportion to needs”.
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