Less space is needed in intensive care units (ICs) to receive corona patients, because patients spend less time in the ICU compared to March and April. Diederik Gommers, chairman of the Dutch Intensive Care Association (NVIC), confirms this to NU.nl on Tuesday after reporting De Gelderlander.
In the months of March and April most corona patients were on the ic. According to Gommers, the average hospital stay of a patient was then 22 days. In May and June this had dropped to about sixteen days.
More patients will also survive if they are placed on the ICU. In March and April, nearly 30 percent of the corona patients who came to the ICU died, now it is 15 percent.
According to Gommers, the shorter length of stay means that fewer IC beds are needed than during the peak in March and April. A condition is that patients do not all need IC care at the same time.
“During the peak (in March and April, ed.) We had 1,400 COVID patients in the ICU and there were another 350 non-COVID patients. So we needed more than seventeen hundred beds”, says Gommers. “At a new peak, for example, now only 700 IC beds would be needed for people with COVID. If they don’t all come in at the same time.”
Shorter hospital stay presumably due to other treatment
The cause for the shorter length of stay of corona patients in intensive care is still being sought, but Gommers suspects that this is due to other treatment methods. “It is likely that it is due to other therapies, but it cannot be said with certainty yet.”
At the end of July, Gommers said already in conversation with NU.nl that the administration of, for example, blood thinners and dexamethasone allows corona patients to recover faster than in the spring, when these drugs were not yet given.
According to Gommers, “the spaces have been physically created” to increase the capacity of the intensive care units, but “there is no way to open a window with enough nurses”. “We try to give it a good interpretation in terms of staff, but where we are now cannot be expressed in numbers. Every little bit helps.”
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