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Hospitals are forced to further scale up regular care due to the increasing number of corona patients in ICU wards. Some of them are now also postponing heart and cancer operations, according to a tour of hospitals and IC heads, according to de Volkskrant.
There are now nearly 800 corona patients on the IC, the highest number since the first wave. To this are added the hundreds of regular IC patients. On Friday, the National Acute Care Network decided to further scale up the total number of IC beds, from 1,450 to 1,550 beds.
This is at the expense of other care. Until now, hospitals have mainly postponed operations for problems that do not pose an acute health risk to the patient, such as knee and hip operations. Diederik Gommers, IC doctor and foreman of the Dutch Association for Intensive Care: “But we had said of operations that you really cannot postpone for more than six weeks, such as open-heart surgery or some cancer treatments: we do not want to scale them down,” he says against the newspaper. “We are now at the point where we can no longer deliver.”
The Radboudumc in Nijmegen, among others, is out of necessity to scale this so-called class 3 care. “The operational teams check every morning what is possible, whether there is room on the ic for an operator,” said a spokesperson. The situation is similar in UMC Amsterdam, says IC head Armand Girbes. Operations are being postponed, IC nurses have to divide their attention over more and more patients. “Every time we go a step further, while you actually think: that is not possible.”
The root of the problem is not the number of beds available for the ICs. Breathing and monitoring equipment is also readily available, says Diederik Gommers. There is simply a shortage of staff, partly due to the high absenteeism due to illness. In some hospitals, he says this is above 10 percent.
07.00 – France is taking steps to speed up vaccination
To speed up the vaccination rate, France is extending the period between the first and the second corona jack with Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna from four to six weeks from Wednesday. Health minister Olivier Veran announced this Sunday in Le Journal du Dimanche.
“That ensures that we can vaccinate faster, without reducing protection,” said Veran in the newspaper. He also said that the under-attacked AstraZeneca drug will be available to all over-55s from Monday, and not just those with underlying suffering. The vaccine from Janssen in Leiden will also be used for people over 55 from Monday. France will then receive about 200,000 doses thereof. According to Veran, that is a week earlier than planned.
Every day, an average of around 40,000 new infections are diagnosed in France. The country, which instituted another strict lockdown last weekend, is expected to pass the grim milestone of 100,000 corona deaths this week. The number of infections remains very high, says Veran. “We assume that the decline will come after a period of stabilization. But then we have to keep going. ”
In the Netherlands, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine has the second injection after about six weeks, with Moderna after four weeks and with AstraZeneca after 12 weeks.
22.00 – Additional vaccines for hospital staff
The cabinet is accelerating the release of extra vaccines for hospital staff. It concerns 35,000 doses of the Janssen vaccine. It must prevent even more staff from being lost in the third corona wave.
The decision came on Saturday evening after consultation between Ministers Hugo de Jonge and Tamara van Ark of Public Health, Ernst Kuipers of the National Network Acute Care and Ad Melkert of the Dutch Association for Hospitals.
On Monday, the Netherlands will receive the first vaccines from pharmaceutical company Janssen in Leiden. It concerns 79,200 doses. So almost half of that goes to hospitals. Only one shot is needed from this vaccine.
The vaccines are intended for employees who come into direct contact with patients and therefore run a greater risk of becoming infected with the corona virus. The aim is to vaccinate other hospital staff with direct patient contact in the coming weeks.
About 40,000 doctors and nurses from corona, intensive care and emergency departments were vaccinated in February. Two weeks ago, hospitals received AstraZeneca vaccines for 39,500 employees.
But this week it was decided to stop using that vaccine for people under the age of 60 for the time being. Hospital staff who were initially going to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca can now be vaccinated with Janssen’s vaccine.
In total, about 200,000 hospital employees are still waiting for their vaccination, according to the Federation of Medical Specialists.
16.30 – False vaccination invitation on behalf of RIVM in circulation
There is currently a fake email in circulation inviting people on behalf of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) for a corona vaccination against payment. The message states that an application for vaccination is being processed by Medicorps, a commercial corona testing agency. The RIVM “emphasizes that this is not an official message from the RIVM”, the organization said on Saturday.
The RIVM reports that it does not cooperate at all with Medicorps in the vaccination campaign. In addition, receiving a corona vaccine is free.
Recipients of the message are strongly advised not to click on the links in the e-mail, not to call the telephone number mentioned, and to delete the e-mail. People who have received the message can report fraud via www.fraudehelpdesk.nl.
10.48 – Third wave alarm in Germany
The largest hospital in Germany, the Charité in Berlin, is very concerned about the course of the third corona wave in the country. The hospital has seen a lot more corona patients end up on its IC in the past two weeks and is afraid of defecting, says board member Martin Kreis.
At the beginning of this year, the Charité could no longer receive corona patients from outside Berlin on its IC, because it was almost full. The hospital is now seeing an increase in the number of ICU patients between the ages of 30 and 60. People from that group are usually not yet vaccinated against the corona virus.
“If the numbers of critically ill Covid-19 patients exceed those of the second wave, we will be in a critical situation,” said Kreis. He also warns that, although most hospital workers have been vaccinated, many of them are exhausted by the corona crisis and suffer from mental complaints.
Germany has seen the number of lung virus infections increase in recent weeks. More than 50 million corona tests have now been carried out in the country and the virus has been detected in nearly three million people to date. The country attributes more than 78,000 deaths to Covid-19. Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government are working on a law that will allow them to impose a very strict national lockdown without interference from the states.
9.01 – People from 1949, 1950 and 1951 can already make an appointment
The next group will be given a corona vaccination. People born in 1949, 1950 and 1951 can schedule an injection appointment online from Saturday. They will soon receive a letter with the invitation at home. It concerns more than 500,000 people who receive the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech. For this they can go to one of the more than eighty vaccination locations of the GGDs.
The umbrella organization, GGD GHOR Nederland, calls on people to make agreements online as much as possible. “As more and more vaccine will become available in the coming weeks, the vaccination rate will be increased. In order to make the hundreds of thousands of appointments per week fast and smooth, making online appointments is indispensable. ”
The GGDs and GPs vaccinated nearly half a million people last week. More than a million people a week will have to be vaccinated during May. Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) wants every adult who wants to have at least a first injection by July.
6.45 – 42 rare cases of thrombosis after AstraZeneca vaccination
In Germany, 42 cases have been reported of people who developed blood clots in the brain after vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine. The medical supervisor, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, announced this Friday. In 23 cases there was also a low platelet count.
Most of the cases concerned women between the ages of 20 and 63. It should be noted that AstraZeneca has also been used more frequently in women in Germany. Eight people have died in Germany from the effects of the rare side effect. It concerns five women and three men.
The Paul Ehrlich Institute reports that three women (34-81 years) and four men (81-86 years) have also been diagnosed with brain thrombosis after vaccination with Pfizer / BioNTech. The combination with a reduction in platelet count did not occur.
Germany, like the Netherlands, has limited the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 60. According to the European Medicines Agency EMA, there is likely a link between the vaccine and the rare and dangerous combination of blood clots (thrombosis) and a low platelet count (thrombocytopenia). Several dozen people in Europe were affected after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.
6.35 – Half-year corona app: effective, but not used by everyone
The CoronaMelder app has been in use on Saturday for exactly six months and has since warned thousands of people that they have been in the vicinity of someone with corona, while they were often not in the picture at a GGD. In that sense, the application is therefore effective, researchers from Erasmus University previously stated. But not everyone has the application installed on his or her smartphone.
CoronaMelder monitors whether users have been close to other people, without revealing their identity. If they are subsequently tested positive, they can warn other users of the app if they have been around for more than 15 minutes.
Millions of Dutch people downloaded the app when it was officially put into use after a test period on 10 October. But after the initial period, the number of users increased only marginally. According to the latest state of Thursday, 4.7 million people are now using the app. That amounts to 27 percent of the population, against 26 percent a month earlier. So still about three quarters of the Dutch have not installed the application. This can be seen in all age groups, Tilburg University reported earlier.
Nevertheless, the app is effective, researchers from Erasmus University concluded at the end of last month. Almost six in ten people who heard through the app that they had been in the vicinity of someone with corona had not been approached by the GGD for source and contact research. About 144,000 people have received such a report so far. In the past month, this involved about 500 to 800 reports per day. People who undergo testing after such a report also appear to be significantly more likely to be infected than the rest of the population.
However, after receiving a warning signal, people often do not heed the request to get tested, the researchers note. Half make an appointment on the same day, but the rest do not. The call to stay at home after a notification from the app is also often not followed up.
6.30 – US regulator: no link Janssen vaccine and blood complaints
The health authorities in the United States do not yet see a clear link between blood complaints and Janssen’s corona vaccine. The American regulator of medicines (FDA) reported this after it was announced on Friday that someone who received the drug from Janssen has died and suffered from the same blood complaints that occur with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), a total of four reports – three from the United States – are now known of people who developed blood clots (thrombosis) and low platelet count (thrombocytopenia) after administration of the Janssen vaccine.
The American regulator says it is aware of “a few” cases in the United States. “At this time, we have not found a causal relationship with vaccination and we are continuing our investigation and review of these cases,” the FDA said in a statement. “Both conditions can have many different causes.”
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