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The Penafiel Hospital is one of the first to be overloaded with covid-19, they are the ones with the most patients. How do you get to the end of this week?
We are experiencing a period of great pressure, as usual, and which will continue over the next few days taking into account the very strong increase in cases we are having.
When you say it’s normal …
I say that it is normal because of the outbreak that we are experiencing in the region, because it is a completely abnormal situation and one that we did not have at this time.
How many patients with covid-19 are there in the hospital?
More than 100 hospitalized patients, seven in intensive care, but the outlook is that it will increase.
With that number of patients, what is the percentage of hospital beds dedicated to covid-19 right now? There has been talk of more than 20% in recent days.
They have asked me, but I think the important thing is to understand how it works. Like any institution, the hospital uses beds as needed. Two weeks ago we thought that now we don’t have to use so many beds. We have been dedicating beds to covid-19 for the patients that appear and as it happens naturally in peaks, when help is needed from other hospitals, we turn to this help. That’s what we’re doing.
What did you project for this height?
We have an emergency support structure that will be completed by the end of the month. The flu peak was expected from the beginning of November, so we expected an increase in patients but not something of this size and with such a sudden growth.
Can you understand what caused these infections? Where were the patients infected?
What is being communicated is that much of the contamination is due to family and friends. Not long ago, it was reported that a nightclub closed in Felgueiras. There are fairs that continue to be held. Communions that then inevitably generate family lunch. There is a widespread desire to maintain normalcy in people’s lives, and that is understandable. Nobody wants a new confinement. Now there is a dimension from which we must realize that we can no longer leave.
Didn’t people get it?
In the first stage we had to flatten the curve to be able to respond. Then there was a tension in our social behavior, we had the summer, the arrival of the emigrants, the people who got together and all this could be accommodated reasonably and well: as human beings we cannot live in permanent confines. Now there comes a point where if there is this explosion of cases, it is necessary to re-compress the curve. Perhaps not with the dimension that was done the other time, and hence these focused measures implemented this week.
His hospital center warned of an increase in cases in his area, 12 counties. Do you think that the measures that are being applied only in the municipalities of Paços de Ferreira, Lousada and Felgueiras will be sufficient?
We hope so, but if not, we will have to see it. There is an evaluation day by day. If these measures do not work alone, others will have to be imposed. When we made this alert, it was in the sense that people realized that inappropriate behaviors later generate cases in people who will need to be hospitalized and because we ended up having a large influx to the emergency, which affects the care of patients who they really are urgent. In recent times, in the last two weeks, we have had surplus surpluses to emergency greater than what would be the spikes we usually have in the flu. There were many people who went to the ER just to get tested and this could not continue.
This week he spoke of more than 800 people in the emergency room in one day.
Exactly. Throughout the year, we are the second largest emergency in the North after São João, we are already a hospital in great load, with a great need for assistance from the population. Numbers like these are only seen at the peak of the flu and not always. We have 200 people who come every day just to take the exam. And that’s why they had to open new test centers. One was inaugurated this week in Paços de Ferreira, another was inaugurated at the Penafiel fairgrounds and next week another will be inaugurated in Penafiel. That is why a series of measures are being taken to take patients out of the emergency room and allow us to give an adequate response to patients who really need it.
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