Increased pressure on Romanian hospitals

The number of COVID-19 patients in Romania is on the rise, with more than 15 thousand cases being reported in the past 24 hours.

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Leyla Cheamil, 06.10.2021, 13:50

The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc in Romania. The crisis caused by COVID-19 is beginning to deepen and to put even more pressure on hospitals and the medical staff. On Tuesday, when two negative records were reached in Romania, the authorities announced that there were no more free beds in ICUs. Although the National Public Health Institute estimated that the threshold of 15,000 new COVID-19 cases of per day will be reached at the end of October, this threshold was exceeded on Tuesday, when more than 15,000 new cases were reported in 24 hours.

Another negative record is the number of deaths associated with the new coronavirus – more than 250 in one single day. Also, the positive test rate has exceeded 19%. Hundreds of localities have reported more than six Covid cases per thousand inhabitants, and several towns and cities, including Bucharest, have reached a rate of 10 per thousand. Doctors are doing their best to cope with the growing number of patients. On Tuesday, there were over 14,400 people in hospitals across the country, and 1,480 in intensive care.

Doctors have once again underscored the importance of vaccination that provides protection against infection with the new coronavirus. In fact, the numbers speak for themselves. Specialists draw attention to the fact that 95% of the patients now in ICUs and over 70% of the hospitalized patients are unvaccinated. The medical director of the “Matei Balş” Institute in Bucharest, Dr. Adrian Marinescu, said that in recent weeks, pressure has been placed on all hospitals caring for COVID patients. According to him it is more than obvious that those who put pressure on the system are the unvaccinated people. And hospitals no longer have free beds for them.

Adrian Marinescu: “There is waiting time for patients, they need to be managed as well as possible, to be sent to other hospitals, because its hard to find a bed for them, to keep them monitored for a certain period of timeˮ.

Beatrice Mahler, the manager of the “Marius Nasta” Institute in Bucharest believes that the situation has not got out of control, and that solutions can still be found, because everybody received treatment, a bed was eventually found for them and they received medical care. Beatrice Mahler strongly believes that more intensive mobilization from all hospitals is needed to cope with this moment.

In another development, the Coalition of Organizations of Patients with Chronic Diseases in Romania and the associations of HIV patients are dissatisfied with the way in which the authorities decided to block the hospitalization of chronic patients. They urge decision-makers to reconsider the decision and work out other solutions for the COVID patients and not endanger the lives of chronic and HIV patients. (LS)