The Covid ward of the José Molina Orosa Hospital currently has 34 patients admitted, and is only 14 beds away from completing the ward, which has a capacity of 47, since one of those patients is in another area of the Hospital. From the management of the Sanitary Services, they already have the next level of the contingency plan in mind in the event of reaching maximum capacity.
The manager of the Sanitary Services, José Luis Aparicio, has detailed in Radio Lanzarote – Onda Cero that in case of exceeding the figure of 47 Covid patients “another plant will not be enabled”, since he has assured that “there is no staff to attend to it”. Therefore, Aparicio has explained that in that case “each service would assume each Covid patient”, as is currently the case with the rest of patients affected by other diseases.
In fact, Aparicio has maintained that with the flu it is treated in a “similar” way, and that during some winters, the flu “harmed” the healthcare pressure in Lanzarote. “In other hospitals it generated patients in the corridors and sick leave”, he explains.
“This would only happen if the system became saturated”, Aparicio has assured, although he has been “optimistic” that this situation will not be reached, and that over the next “ten days” the hospital pressure will decrease in parallel with the active cases.
In addition, the manager of the Sanitary Services has explained that of the patients in the Covid ward “there are ten or twelve patients who have been admitted for other pathologies”, and that when entering the Hospital they tested positive for Covid. “If you enter the hospital for appendicitis, and you test positive for Covid, we have to take you to the Covid ward, and count it because it occupies a Covid resource”, he explained.
Aparicio has also taken the opportunity to assure that patients who are actually admitted for the coronavirus, and who suffer from pneumonia, thanks to the vaccine manifest “milder symptoms” and, therefore, remain in the Hospital for less time. On the other hand, he has also pointed out that patients who are admitted and who have not received the vaccine against Covid, “last longer admitted”.
On the other hand, and in reference to the evident decrease in the number of tests that are carried out on the Island, Aparicio has assured that “the ones that are due on the day” are done. “When we have 500 daily positives, the next day there will be many tests, because there will be many close contacts to study”, he explained, although he acknowledges that currently they are only doing tests “to vulnerable close contacts”.
“If suddenly there was an increase, then more would be done, we have not considered a number of daily PCRs”, Aparicio sentences.
The screening of the 67 workers of the Insular Hospital reflects only one positive
José Luis Aparicio has shown his concern about the Covid outbreak registered in the Insular Hospital, which already affects 15 patients. However, the manager of the Sanitary Services celebrates that the vaccine has prevented the situation from being much worse, since in the health center “almost everyone is vaccinated”. Only one patient has manifested symptoms of the virus, and their health has improved in recent days.
Aparicio has also pointed out that the 67 workers underwent a screening last week, and this Monday they have undergone a second one to detect possible contagions. In this sense, he has pointed out that only one of the workers has yielded a positive result. “Then there is the difficulty of knowing where it came from, if from a visit or who knows how it was transmitted to them”, adds Aparicio, recalling that caution is still maintained with the restriction of visits to patients at the Hospital.
Downward trend of the pandemic curve
The situation of the pandemic seems to be improving in Lanzarote, and over the last few days both active cases and the accumulated incidence have been decreasing. “We already knew that the morphology of the curve was going to be like this”, Aparicio has assured, who justifies it since in other places, where the ómicron variant had affected previously, it happened like this.
“It has been fulfilled, just as it rose like a meteoric rocket upwards, now it is falling at a quite striking speed”, Aparicio has assured, although he recognizes that this downward trend “is never well in sync” with healthcare pressure.
“We have to suffer a hospital pressure for about a week or ten days more, and from there, it will start to fall in parallel”, predicts the manager of the Sanitary Services, who hopes that in the month of March, “at the latest”, the situation will be stabilized.