![]() Last week there were 20 or so patients in a critical condition, much fewer than the 220 who they had to treat at once during the first wave. María José Abadías, a deputy director at Vall d’Hebron, Catalonia’s biggest hospital, says that hospitalization is “growing slowly” and that the situation is still under control. According to Castellanos, of most concern is Catalonia, where a quarter of its ICU beds is already full (338 people). There are even some with an excess of 20%. Nine regions are already above 15% of ICU occupation with Covid patients. We are always lagging behind the pandemic María Fernández, spokesperson for the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine We are tired, we have no support, no reinforcements. The problem is if this is an omen of what’s to come.” “If this doesn’t get worse, we can handle it. We have 25 Covid patients on the normal ward and a dozen or so in the ICU.” This is compared to 450 and 100, respectively, during the first wave. “Last Friday, given that things looked bad, some surgeries were suspended, but in the end, the weekend was calmer than expected. Pere Domingo, the Covid coordinator at the Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, agrees. “This is not a situation where we are overwhelmed, but it is of concern.” José Díez Manglano, the president of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine and a doctor at the Royo Villanova Hospital in Zaragoza, explains: “The number of cases in my hospital has quadrupled in the last 15 days,” he says. ![]() The pressure on all levels of the healthcare system is growing, however, and staff are already starting to complain of overload. For example, in Aragón, 4,300 contacts of cases are being monitored via the primary healthcare system, but last summer this number was as high as 18,500 and in October 2020, it was 24,300. Meanwhile, the capacity of primary healthcare centers is being put to the test and they are permanently overloaded, but they are not overwhelmed as they were during the fifth wave. In fact, there are half a dozen regions with hospital occupation that is similar to or above the peak of their fifth wave, and there are several, such as the Basque Country, Asturias and Valencia, whose ICU occupation is at the level of the peak during the previous wave. This Friday, however, the infection rate was more than double, with 511 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and hospitalizations were 41% down: 6,667 coronavirus patients, according to the latest data from the Health Ministry.īut this wave is still rising and the situation varies from region to region. At this point last year, with an incidence of 207 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, there were more than 11,300 patients in the country’s hospitals, with nearly 2,000 in the ICU. The situation seen in Spain so far is not like that of other waves, however. “It is therefore considered very likely that the Omicron VOC will cause additional hospitalizations and fatalities, in addition to those already expected in previous forecasts that only take into account the Delta VOC,” reads the latest risk report published by the ECDC. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has already sounded the alarm, and has called on hospitals to prepare for a possible explosion of cases. ![]() Omicron variant spreads across Spain: In Madrid, it already accounts for 30% of diagnosed cases “Everything is rising and given that there are no major restrictions in place the expectation is that they will continue to rise,” explains Álvaro Castellanos, the president of the Spanish Society of Intensive Medicine. ![]() But some centers are already overwhelmed and the short-term outlook is far from hopeful: healthcare professionals are expecting more pressure on hospitals and the primary healthcare system due to the spread of the omicron variant, the effects of social interaction after Christmas, and the combination of the coronavirus and flu season. With nearly 80% of Spanish citizens fully vaccinated against the disease, this mass vaccination is working as a barrier that will avoid the complete overload of the system and hospital occupation levels are below those registered in other months of 2021. Healthcare professionals are looking to the coming weeks with “concern.” Hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions due to Covid-19 have nearly tripled in the last month: there are currently 6,667 people hospitalized and 1,306 ICU patients. Spain’s healthcare centers are holding their breath given the rise of the sixth wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |