In Argentina, doctors adapt as COVID-19 strains hospitals
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Veronica Verdino, an Argentine doctor, helped a therapist insert a tube into the trachea of a COVID19 patient during another hectic day in a hospital emergency room.
Verdino, 31, has become adept at the delicate procedure during the current outbreak of coronavirus cases that has filled clinics in Buenos Aires and nearby towns with patients.
A little over a year ago, before the pandemic hit Argentina, Verdino did not imagine that she would be performing so many intubations at the Llavallol Dr. Norberto Raul Piacentini Hospital in the town of Lomas de Zamora, outside Buenos Aires.
Now doctors who used to be on duty in general wards have become experts in this and other complex techniques typical of intensive care specialists as they help patients who are seriously ill with COVID-19. Some wards have been converted into intensive care units because the outbreak is straining the health system.
The situation at the hospital where Verdino works is similar in many public and private health facilities in Buenos Aires and nearby towns, with an average of more than 20,000 infections and 400 deaths per day in recent weeks and 100% occupation of ICUs in some centers.
Doctors say they are seeing many younger patients, partly because youths are being infected with coronavirus variants at social gatherings, while older people are protected by vaccines they have received.
“We’re cutting corners everywhere . ... We have all the illnesses other than COVID, plus this (coronavirus) wave that exploded,” Verdino said during a recent 24-hour shift.
The husband of the woman who was intubated by Verdino stared dejectedly through the glass from the other side of a door. Nearby, in another room, two patients lay connected to respirators. About 10 feet away, a man who had just died was placed in a bag.
A few days later, on
NATACHA PISARENKO/AP another grueling shift, Verdino climbed onto a small bench next to the bed of a man she had tried to intubate, leaned over his chest and performed CPR in a desperate attempt to save his life. Several of her colleagues helped her.
The patient died. Verdina and her colleague, Stephanie Munoz, took time to prepare the man’s body and the room before his son viewed him through the window of the door.
Nurses describe a situation known as “warm bed,” in which a patient who has died is promptly replaced in a room by another seriously ill person.
General ward medics have also learned to master the use of complex drugs that keep patients sedated and to study electrocardiograms and CT scans, as well as to perform laryngoscopes. They do it as oxygen supplies become scarce in hospitals, which have formed networks to assist each other when they can.
“I was used to working a lot but this overwhelms you in everything,” said nurse Silvia Cardoso, who works with Verdino.