The new cases of covid-19 in the Community of Madrid increase every day and with it, the number of positives that require hospital admission also grows. This Thursday there were 618 patients admitted to hospitals in the region – 78 more than on Wednesday – compared to the 128 hospitalized patients who had just 15 days ago, according to the daily situation report prepared by the General Directorate of Public Health, the Madrid Service Health and private hospitals.
Hospital 12 de Octubre, with 71 coronavirus patients in the ward and six in the ICU, is the center with the highest number of admissions. Faced with this rebound in cases, the hospital has launched the elasticity plan and has taken measures such as re-enabling specific plants for patients with covid-19 or stopping programming interventions in the operating room that require hospitalization, as confirmed by a spokeswoman for the center . Santiago Usoz, who works as an emergency nurse at the hospital, assures that they have “panic to return to the situation of March” and points to the “relaxation of security measures and the absence of effective tracing” as the main triggers.
Rakel H., risk prevention delegate on October 12, assures that there are currently two complete plants with confirmed covid positives. “They are enabling other plants, leaving the beds empty and prepared for a possible avalanche,” he says. “They are preparing, but it is true that the hospital is filling up, it is spreading and what worries me most is that in the maternity ward, which was a clean area, now there are children and pregnant women admitted with covid. It is not something of older people with pathologies ”, explains the prevention delegate. However, she assures that there is still no reinforcement in the squad because “things are relatively calm”, although they do foresee that from September “it will skyrocket a bit”.
A similar decision has been taken by the Hospital de Móstoles, the second with the highest volume of patients with this disease, with a total of 40 admitted to conventional hospitalization and four to intensive care. August 3 the management of the center issued an internal circular ordering the reorganization of the hospital. This includes the suspension of major outpatient surgery, that of the Pain Technique that is done in the nursing consultation and that of sleep studies in Clinical Neurophysology. The scheduled fibronchoscopy activity has also been canceled and only urgent or non-delayed ones are performed.
As there are not enough trackers, we do not know where the blow is going to come or how strong it is going to be, we are blind
Guillén del Barrio, nurse in La Paz
For Rafael Rubio, a nurse on the sixth floor of the Hospital de Móstoles, all these measures are meaningless if the center’s staff is not reinforced. “The only measures that have been taken have been to close space, close beds, and they say they are available in case they are needed. Ok, they are available but what there is not is people who can take care of those beds ”, he acknowledges. “If the operating rooms have to be re-enabled with respirators like last time, it is because we have not made any progress. If primary care has not been provided with trackers and sufficient means to detect these patients before they reach the hospital and avoid a collapse, we are exactly the same as in March ”, he adds. In addition, the nurse again warns of the fear of contagion on the part of the health workers. “Right now we have five infected workers on the fifth floor and they are testing the rest of the colleagues. We ask for a much closer and more exhaustive monitoring by occupational health ”.
The third center with the highest rate of admissions of patients with covid-19 is the Gregorio Marañón, also with 40 patients with positive PCR for the disease and three in the ICU. La Paz is behind, with 32 admissions to the ward and 6 to the ICU, and Ramón y Cajal, with 28 patients in conventional hospitalization and two in the ICU.
La Paz is another of the centers that has also adapted its spaces and resources for fear of a rebound in cases. For now, the hospital has set up two floors for patients with coronavirus, according to Jesús Camacho, a member of the center’s cleaning company committee. “On the 13th floor there were 12 patients and it has capacity for 24, and on the 10th there are about 20 patients,” he assures regarding the situation this Wednesday. “There is an ICU exclusively for covid on floor 9 and they have begun to transfer patients from floor 12 to be able to admit patients with the virus,” he adds. In addition, as indicated, “in the emergency room, covid patients have been separated in the trauma area and a work has been carried out in the gym to be able to admit patients with oxygen as in any other emergency box.”
This Thursday there were 618 patients admitted to hospitals in the region compared to 128 hospitalized patients who had just 15 days ago
Guillén del Barrio is a nurse in the emergency room in La Paz. They had a really bad time in the first wave of the pandemic, he says, and now he’s worried that it will happen again. “We are afraid because as there are not enough trackers and it is already absolutely clear that it is not that they do not get them, it is that they do not want to have them, we do not know where the blow is going to come or how strong it is going to be, we are blind” , recognize. Even so, he assures that, for the moment, the hospital continues to work normally. “Measures are being taken before the bull catches us and they have already reorganized it, but the urgency works well,” he admits.
The Getafe Hospital, eleventh on the list with a score of cases, this Thursday suspended family visits throughout the hospital and only those strictly authorized may attend, as announced by posters in the center itself. Information to families will be carried out from now on by phone.
Covid-19 infections continue to increase in the last hours in the Community of Madrid, with 720 confirmed cases this Thursday, 66 more compared to the previous day. In total, there are 618 people admitted for the virus in hospitals in the region, 82 of them in the ICU. The death toll was four patients, the same as the two previous days.
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