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The atmosphere outside the emergency room of the Beatriz Ângelo de Loures Hospital this Saturday afternoon did not correspond in any way to the chaos described by those who know what happens inside. There are no queues or people in distress, no sirens are heard and ambulances arrive, park and calmly their professionals guide the sick inside, on foot, in a wheelchair or on a stretcher.
In the waiting room you can see through the glass, there are people sitting a meter or a little more away. There are no companions except in the most extreme situations.
Among the few family members abroad, Idalina (not her real name) hopes to be given the clothes her octogenarian father wore when he was hospitalized an hour earlier. “Nobody knew it was a covid,” says Idalina, one of five siblings. “My father had to be admitted, he has a heart problem. Today we found out that he had covid ”, he continues.
The woman, who thought she was going to quickly solve a situation, does not wear a jacket over the fabric that slightly covers her pants. He will not be more than 60 years old, but, under a wind that freezes at nightfall, his face seems old and his body defenseless with uncertainty.
What to do now if you haven’t even seen a storm approaching? “I do not know how it was possible that my father had covid. He never leaves home. “Conversation like someone who is cheating while waiting.” My father is always at home, “he repeats.
If he doesn’t leave, it could only have been the other daughter who works and lives with him in the same house where another sick brother lives, says Idalina. She was with her father the day before, but it was small. “Yesterday I only had a party in my head when I went to see him,” he says, gesturing with his hands.
You are not thinking about taking the exam, you do not know that you have to, and you are not easily convinced of it. Not even the sister, who cares for her father, was willing to do so. “We told her but she is not going to audition. I don’t know why, she knows. “
Affluence and calm
In this 400-bed hospital, the sudden entry of 187 people with covid fills the perspective of other patients with uncertainty. A woman in flip flops and a robe over her pajamas that she brought home emerges from the ER with the help of an attendant. He seems relieved when he sees a young woman who appears to be his granddaughter. The posture is that of someone who is almost fine, until the moment when the blood begins to gush from her arm and she, who was standing, leans over.
The weak movement of the afternoon is far from the scene of the previous day shown in long lines of ambulances near the entrance of patients with covid-19 in some hospitals. “Yesterday there was a large influx of ambulances, and they brought people with covid because they were intubated and on a stretcher,” says Rita, looking with concern at the door through which the news of a hospitalized relative will arrive.
At Hospital Santa María de Lisboa, one of the two hospitals where the exceptional movement of the previous night sounded the alarms, the president of the board of directors, Daniel Ferro, met with journalists at the front door to clarify that what it was happening it wasn’t happening. the chaos”.
But he did not skimp on words to describe the situation that had arisen in the last 15 days. “The capacity of the system is close, very close to the limit,” he warned. He described a context in which the increase in hospital admissions for the treatment of these patients was 70%, unsustainable over time and incomparable with what had been happening until the end of December.
Shared responsibility
The last two weeks have been successive peaks in the admission of patients with covid-19 to the emergency room and hospital, described the person responsible for framing what happened the day before. “Last night we had one of those peaks” that have been repeated in a context in which the hospital and its professionals are in a “situation of overstrain”.
It is possible that there will be “overexertion for a short period and in a limited way,” added Daniel Ferro, making it clear that this overexertion “is a solution that cannot be only in hospitals.”
Therefore, it calls for “a shared responsibility between hospitals and society” to contain the third wave that exceeded expectations and the contingency plan prepared.
“The responsibility of each one in the risk and in the attitude that they are asked to have to be more effective,” he explains to the PUBLIC. It will also depend on whether your expectations will be frustrated. The expectation that in two weeks “the situation will be under control.”
“There is an availability of health professionals that, outside of this pandemic, is difficult to obtain,” he briefly tells the PUBLIC, describing the manifest predisposition to reinforce the teams in the covid-19 units with professionals from different specialties. But here too, he emphasizes, one can be very close to the limit, because personal availability and professional dedication are not unlimited.
