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Patients with and without COVID-19 are mixed in the Sös emergency department.
This is the opinion of several people that Aftonbladet has been in contact with.
– It was a disaster. There were elderly and frail people in the same room as those who coughed all night, says Sara, 46.
Sara, 46, from Stockholm, went to the emergency room in Sös, Södersjukhuset, last Sunday. He had stomach pains and had to stay overnight. According to her, coronary heart disease mixed with other patients in the ward she was in.
– It was so full that the cabin was not enough. The patients were allowed to lie down in the middle of the room. They all used the same bathroom, she says.
Sara overheard staff talking about some patients in the room who had COVID-19, or at least were suspected of having the virus.
– I didn’t feel safe at all. If I previously worried about having a crown, it was nothing against the anxiety I had that night. People coughed all the time, next to me.
I had covid – had to sit in the normal waiting room
Another patient, Sofia, 36, testified about similar things. She had been corona sick for a few days when her condition worsened. She contacted 1177, who urged her to enter urgently. At the Sö emergency department, he was careful to inform staff that he had been diagnosed with Covid-19.
Despite this, she was referred to a regular waiting room. After a while, he was asked to go to another waiting room; this was also shared with patients without corona infection. Along the way, he used the same hallway as staff and other patients.
Sofia also testifies that all the patients used the same bathroom. However, after waiting, they gave him his own room. He also received a mouth guard at the reception.
As he was about to leave the hospital, he asked a staff member if he could take another exit, to avoid running into patients and staff in the hallway.
– But the answer was that they couldn’t offer me another way out. Right when I was there, there weren’t that many people in the hospital, thankfully. But it didn’t feel good at all. It may have infected others.
Photo: Jessica Gow / TT
Södersjukhuset in Stockholm.
Follow the guidelines
Johan Raxell, SÖS emergency room chief physician, writes in an email that if a person with a confirmed corona infection sits far enough away from the next patient in the waiting room, they have a mouth guard and are taken to a room as soon as possible, hospital guidelines are followed.
– As for the corridors, it is a good topic that was discussed a lot at the beginning of the pandemic. The bottom line was that the risk of spreading the infection is minimal as long as you move down the hall and wear mouth guards.
Raxell adds that it is difficult to know who is infected with COVID-19 and who presents to the emergency room. Therefore, it is important to separate all patients from each other.
How do you see the risk of the covid disease infecting others?
– So far we have not seen any spread of infection in the ER, but the situation is serious and the margins are small. It is not uncommon for us to have more than a hundred patients in the emergency room at the same time.
Photo: Södersjukhuset
Johan Raxell.
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