To understand what “borderline hospitals” means, you had to be at last night Pistoia. At 6 pm, the San Jacopo emergency room was closed. For days, hospitalizations for Covid pneumonia have been going on at the rate of about thirty a day and the facility is now full. It should reopen this morning at 9, unless otherwise ordered. In the meantime, night emergencies – a not very remote hypothesis in a city of 90,000 inhabitants – will be diverted to Careggi in Florence. It’s 35 kilometers, and it can make a difference. Pistoia is certainly not the only red light that flashes on the map of Italian hospitals that risk ending up under the second wave.
–
Beds in the church
Instead of Pistoia you could go to Orbassano, in Piedmont. The San Luigi hospital, 378 places, is close to full house. For this reason the chairs in the conference room were unbolted, the benches of the chapel stacked against the wall. And so they were made another 74 beds. Not a single one had been occupied until last night, but if the flow of shelters doesn’t stop, we’ll get there soon. Perhaps very soon as hospitalizations across the region exceed the peak of the first wave by 25%. Even in Latina they are ready to do the same. Tabernacle and sacred furnishings have already been moved from the chapel of Santa Maria Goretti. Even if for now it has been preferred to earn another ten beds by setting up a tent in the parking lot in front of the emergency room.
–
The new Codogno
The most delicate case, however, seems to be that of San Gerardo of Monza. “We are Codogno right now,” says Mario Alparone, general manager of the health care company. The capacity, 450 seats including 48 in intensive care, is close to the limit. But above all 340 out of 3,000 doctors and nurses are positive. The hospital has asked for help from military doctors, for now in vain. And also to the hospitals of Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona, from where several Covid patients of the first wave had arrived. But for now it has only arrived from Brescia a little help with 10 transfers. In that “Codogno we are” there is an even more worrying sign of the single hospital close to collapse. During the first wave, there were several areas of the country with a low-intensity infection, willing to lend a hand to those who had an unsustainable number of hospitalizations. This time, with the pandemic galloping across the country, there is a risk that there will be less room for that solidarity, including health solidarity, which did a lot before the summer.
–
118 in Milan
The situation of the hospitals in Naples is also critical. And the images of the rows of cars waiting at Cotugno, with the nurses doing the pre-triage at the window along the queue and even bringing some oxygen dolls. While after the worrying boom in the second half of October, the hospitalization situation in Milan seems to have stabilized. On high levels, which cannot last a month. But at least the curve no longer rises exponentially. Calls to 118 I’m basically just for Covid. And the hospitals have completed the conversion of their beds, with the Sacco, for example, now 70% dedicated to this pathology. However, this too can be a problem.
–
The other patients
Inevitably the conversion removes beds from the other departments, to the sick whom we now call “conventional”. The case was raised by the Italian Society of Neurology which wonders what “will happen to people affected by stroke”. Also because these days we have focused on the tables of Agenas, the Regional Health Services Agency, which gives us the percentage of beds occupied by Covid patients, region by region. Yesterday we were 34% in intensive care and 49% in medical areas. But that doesn’t mean that the other places are free. They are simply occupied by “conventional” patients. With the sum, the limit is sometimes not touched but exceeded.
–
–
November 9, 2020 (change November 9, 2020 | 22:57)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED
–
