Florence, January 12, 2022 – Thehealth care entered a new tunnel. A serious crisis, completely different from the one experienced so far due to the pandemic but with equally serious consequences. Due to the large number of health workers who test positive at the screenings that are carried out weekly, many services are on their knees due to a shortage of staff: yesterday 17 nurses in the emergency room of Santa Maria Nuova, although completely asymptomatic, went into isolation. With the Covid bubble saturated with 16 people, a positive psychiatric patient was examined in an ambulance, without dismissing him: there would be no room for hospitalization.
Similar scenarios in many departments where you already have to deal with the shortage of sanitary. The medically assisted procreation service has been closed in Careggi – all infected staff – The patients, who carry out treatments with non-postponable deadlines, have been diverted to public centers of Cortona and the Versilia hospital in Lido di Camaiore. The hospital apologizes for the inconvenience by announcing that “as soon as possible” it will be “back to full operation”.
The Tuscany will ask to be able to suspend the carrying out of weekly tests for staff (and to be able to have asymptomatic positives work in the Covid departments) in order not to risk that the number of isolations forces to further reduce the ordinary activity already reduced to a minimum. Outpatient clinics were closed for specialist visits and examinations. And even in the surgical field, all scheduled interventions have been suspended, with the imaginable consequences when you have to leave again: waiting lists out of control.
Meanwhile an attempt is made to cope with the wave of requests for hospitalization, which is always growing. A total of 1,230 beds are occupied by positive Covid patients in Tuscany. The saturation of medical areas is 22% (with 1,108 hospitalized), that of intensive care 21.4% (with 122). With this impetuous pace of progression, if other intermediate care beds are not opened, which are out of the fill rate count according to which the placement of the regions in the color range is decided, Tuscany will soon find itself in the orange zone.
For the absolute need for new beds from today the hospital of Figline it will again be transformed into a Covid bubble. But places are also sought for patients who cannot be managed by families at home, often with disadvantaged social conditions: they will be sent to the Covid bubbles created within the rsa. With the attention due to the separation of the paths from the negative guests of the nursing homes, to stay away even from the idea that it could happen as it happened in the first pandemic wave at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio and in many Lombard RSAs with a wicked ordinance that allowed the hospitalization of Covid patients in those facilities.
The entry rate in intensive care in the week between 3 and 9 January, in Tuscany, it was 12 people per million of the 2,829,928 vaccinated population and 118 people per million of the 395,909 non-vaccinated population. The survey carried out by the regional health agency shows a picture of hospital admissions completely changed compared to previous waves and how important it is to be vaccinated even with the third dose to avoid the most serious effects of the disease. At the Careggi hospital out of 136 Covid positive patients (as of January 7), 60 ended up in hospital for reasons other than Covid (cardiovascular pathologies, trauma and cognitive impairment) but found positive to the swab although asymptomatic (44.1%): 70% were vaccinated, of which 30% also with booster. In Ponte a Niccheri out of 47 positive as of January 5, 16 (34%) hospitalized for trauma, psychotic decompensation, heart attack, syncope and infections: 70% were vaccinated and 30% also with a booster.
© All rights reserved