From Monday 40 Covid beds at the Ivrea Clinic

As many in Biella. All fall within the agreement of the Region with private individuals. Meanwhile, in the Canavese the infected grow by 10% in 48 hours. In Ivrea 636

IVREA. From Monday 17 January, the Ivrea Clinic will activate forty Covid beds for patients with medium and low care needs. Another 40, again with the Monza Polyclinic group, will be activated in Biella. These are all beds, as part of the agreement that the Region has entered into with private healthcare operators that allows Piedmont to have around 500 beds available to treat Covid patients. It is not the first time that the Ivrea Clinic has been dealing with Covid patients. In November last year, it had been transformed into a Covid hospital, also welcoming patients in intensive and semi-intensive care. Today the situation is different: the Region has asked private individuals for help for ordinary beds and it will be Dirmei, the intercompany Department of Infectious Diseases and Emergencies, which is responsible for giving the operational line on the management of the pandemic, to send patients to the facilities. The public system, unlike other pandemic waves associated with partial or total lockdowns, is now facing double pressure: on the one hand, Covid patients, albeit with hospitalizations with lower numbers than in previous years and, in percentage terms, lower severity of symptoms, and on the other, the request for health care for all other pathologies and emergencies, without forgetting the thrust on the vaccination campaign.

Clemente Ponzetti, health manager of the Monza Polyclinic group, explains: «The beds will be active from Monday the 17th. The clinic will no longer receive vaccinations, but will continue with visits and interventions outside Covid. We have completely separate paths and activities and have long since developed a protocol for personnel that allows us to work in complete safety ».

That the Covid beds at the Ivrea Clinic served in an area that reckoned, as everywhere, with the growth of hospitalizations and infections and the difficulty, for the ASL / To4, to decide to further reduce ordinary activity in favor of patients affected by the pandemic is a fact. For Giuseppe Summa, Nursind territorial secretary, however, it is a defeat of the public system. And he argues: «It is paradoxical that 24 months after the start of the pandemic we must once again resort to private help. More could and should have been done to ensure the management of a situation that we can no longer consider an emergency. From this dramatic situation, public health will come out in tatters in favor of the private sector. At this moment, it is not only the number of Covid patients that is worrying, but the system’s resilience of all the other patients who come to the public “.

Meanwhile, the growth of infections in the Municipalities continues, followed by the Sentinel which in the last 48 hours has recorded a leap forward of more than 10%, passing from 6,137 to 6,801 positives. Really high numbers in Chivasso 839, Ivrea 636, Volpiano 565, Rivarolo 342, Castellamonte 255. The only municipalities still Covid free are Noasca and Valprato Soana.

Good to know: the Piedmont restwas in the yellow zone also for the next week, even if the cases and outbreaks have increased and the Rt calculated on the date of onset of symptoms has gone from 1.44 to 1.88 and the incidence is 2,227.32 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. The increase in available beds was decisive. The Crisis Unit of the Piedmont Region yesterday communicated 14,741 new cases of people who tested positive for Covid-19 (of which 13,045 after antigen tests), equal to 14.8% of 99,791 swabs performed. Eighteen deaths which brings the total to 12,225.