The hospitals of the North are sounding the alarm: the influx of new COVID patients is so great that they will soon have to be transported to hospitals in the center of the country. If in spring and summer patients were transported to the center from overloaded hospitals in Jerusalem, now it is the North: out of 33 “red” settlements, 19 are located in the North. These are mainly Arab and Druze towns and villages.
The Barometer group, created by the Roni Gamzu projector to monitor the state of hospitals, reports that so far the healthcare system is coping with the flow of coronavirus patients. But the director of the Galilee Hospital in Nahariya, Professor Masud Barhum, has a different opinion. “When they say that the situation is under control, they mean the system as a whole, but if you look at the Northern Region, you get the impression that the rope has become thinner and is about to break. We are close to a situation where we will have to transport patients to the Center, ”the Haaretz newspaper quotes the hospital director.
60 COVID patients were hospitalized in Nahariya, half of whom are in serious condition. They plan to open the fourth coronavirus department in the near future. Barkhum says that this will happen today or tomorrow, as soon as the Ministry of Health sends the equipment.
In the largest hospital in the North, Haifa Rambam, the situation is also tense. Now there are 58 coronavirus patients there, of which 8 are on mechanical ventilation and another 30 need respiratory support. “The situation is difficult. We ask people to follow the orders of the Ministry of Health and not to participate in crowded events, ”said the head of the COVID department at Rambam.
There are 30 coronavirus patients at Carmel Hospital. Half of them are young people. Three men aged 30-40, men without chronic diseases, are in critical condition and are connected to mechanical ventilation.
“We are not coping with a terrible epidemic, there are a huge number of patients. The death toll from COVID-19 is already twice as high as from the flu in previous years, ”said Dr. Arik Eran, head of the intensive care unit at Carmel Hospital, in an interview with Channel 12. “Keep in mind: we have not yet had a coronavirus in winter, the epidemic began in the spring. There were no deaths in January and February. I don’t know what awaits us this winter, when there will be flu and coronavirus. ”
