Europe running out of ICU beds amid second wave
EUROPE is running low on intensive care beds amid a surge of coronavirus cases – as well as the doctors and nurses required to staff them.
In Italy, queues of ambulances have been parked outside hospitals awaiting beds for patients, while in France the government coronavirus tracking app says the intensive care unit (ICU) capacity taken up by Covid-19 patients is 92. per cent and rising.
Many countries say the ICU burden of Covid-19 patients is now equal to or greater than last spring’s peak. But health officials warn adding beds will not help as there are not enough medics trained to care for patients in them.
In France, more than 7,000 health care workers have undergone training in ICU techniques since last spring.
But as ICU units reached 8 per cent capacity, French health minister Olivier Veran said: ‘If the mobilisation is well and truly there, it is not infinite. It is not enough.’
In Italy, Filippo Anelli, the head of the national doctors’ association, said at the current infection rate, there soon will not be enough doctors. Italy has 11,000 ICU beds, but only enough anaesthesiologists for ,000 patients, Mr Anelli said. As of Monday, 2,849 ICU beds were filled nationwide.
Patients from the Netherlands and France are being sent to Germany, but in the past two weeks the number of Covid patients treated in ICUs there has almost tripled, from 943 to 2, 46.
In Spain, Dr Robert Guerri, of Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, said the Covid unit filled up in October and he did not know when beds will be free.
In Portugal, 391 Covid patients were in ICUs as of Monday, compared to 271 in the worst week of spring. ‘There is no end in sight,’ one ICU doctor said.