The University Hospital Center of the Algarve guaranteed today that it maintains normal care activity, despite a greater influx of users due to the increase in Covid-19 cases, but without registering a “significant increase”.
Asked by Lusa about the "pressure" that the lack of response from the Health Line 24 telephone service is having in hospital emergencies, due to the increase in the number of Covid-19 cases that have been registered in recent days, the Hospital Center Universitário do Algarve (CHUA) also added that “the number of admissions has been maintained without major changes in the last week, either in the ward or in the ICU [Intensive Care Unit]”.
The same source guaranteed that, in the "turnout to the Emergency Services", and despite being registered "a large turnout, as is normal at this time of year", so far there has been no "any significant or extraordinary increase" in demand by users in the Algarve region.
“Further information is that CHUA is still in phase 2 of the contingency plan and therefore maintains normal care activity. If necessary, we will advance to the following phases of the aforementioned plan", also assured the Algarve hospital centre, which manages the hospitals in Faro, Portimão and Lagos.
Contrary to what CHUA reports to be happening in the Algarve, there are emergency services in Portuguese hospitals that have registered “record demands” in recent days, in large part non-urgent cases, due to the “failure” of other health system responses , said today to Lusa a responsible of the association of hospital administrators.
“We have overcrowded emergencies. There has been a higher-than-average demand, either because of non-Covid pathologies, which is already common in this period of the year, or because of Covid-19 cases that have risen very strongly in recent days", said Xavier Barreto , member of the board of the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators (APAH).
Xavier Barreto stated that this is an expected rise, but, he said, "what was not predictable was the failure of other responses for these patients", namely the Health Line 24 and primary health care, which are busy with activities trace-covid and with vaccination.
"Hospital emergency services end up being victims of this failure of other parts of the system", with "huge demand peaks" in recent days, he considered.
According to the official, 30% to 40% of the demand that hospitals have had in recent days are non-urgent cases, particularly patients with Covid-19, many of them for testing.
"It doesn't make sense that the emergency room is overcrowded with these patients, who should have had another type of response and unfortunately didn't," he lamented.
The same source also considered that the reinforcement of the telephone line announced by the Ministry of Health, as well as of the tracers of suspected Covid-19 contacts, does not make sense “after the problem has already been created”.
“It should have been done before, anticipating the problem and preventing it from happening”, but, he stressed, “we will wait and see what results from these reinforcements (…) and if this can be recovered, let's see”.
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