Date Published: 06/11/2020
ARCHIVED - Murcia activates contingency emergency plans for hospitals as beds fill
ARCHIVED ARTICLE Intensive care units at hospitals in the Region are full to overflowing and operations have now been cancelled in two major Murcia City hospitals
Despite the increase in the incidence rate of Covid-19 over the last few weeks the regional government in Murcia remains outwardly confident that the “alarming” situation can be kept under control, even though the situation is so serious that the decision has been made to activate a contingency plan which proved unnecessary during the first wave of the pandemic in the spring.
On Wednesday the Murcia government announced that an emergency plan to create 500 extra hospital beds, thus avoiding the collapse of the health service, is to be activated in response to the overstretching of resources at the hospitals of the Region. At present 593 Covid patients are receiving hospital treatment, 98 of them in intensive care units, and if the figures continue to rise at the present rate the likelihood is that within days the threshold will be reached above which the national government has established a situation of “extreme risk”.
The regional government’s Covid Coordinator, Jaime Pérez, has already stated that if there continue to be close to 1,000 new cases confirmed in Murcia every day there will come a point when the system simply cannot cope. Figures of this magnitude have become the norm recently, and since it generally takes a week or so for a confirmed case to require hospitalization and another week for a patient’s to become critical, it can be surmised that for at least the next fortnight the strain on hospitals will continue to increase.
For this reason the emergency contingency plan, which was drawn up during the first wave of the pandemic, has now been adopted, bringing the number of hospital beds in the Region of Murcia up to just over 3,000 and almost trebling the number of intensive care beds from 120 to 350.
On Thursday it was announced that non-urgent surgical procedures have been suspended in two hospitals in the regional capital in order to amplify the capacity for covid care – the Reina Sofía and the Morales Meseguer – and in recent weeks extra wings and wards have been opened up. So critical is the situation in the Morales Meseguer, for example, that there have been up to 22 Covid patients in critical condition at the same time but only 18 intensive care beds available, and a similar shortage of space is reported in the Reina Sofía.
In the largest hospital in Murcia, the Arrixaca in El Palmar, there are currently 99 Covid patients but efforts are being made to maintain heart surgery and neurosurgery; as a result, “overflow” patients are being sent to the Santa Lucía in Cartagena and the Los Arcos del Mar Menor hospital in San Javier.
And the situation is not just confined to the capital; in Yecla, the Virgen del Castillo has 21 covid patients, four times the number a week ago, when there were only 5 patients. Its maximum limit is 30 patients. The situation at the Los Arcos hospital, in the Mar Menor, is also amplifying, with 41 hospitalized on the wards, and six in ICU, with a maximum capacity of 57, space which is now being filled with transfers from the Murcia hospitals.
Peréz ruled out the possibility that "a field hospital is going to be set up in each health center," but he did indicate that "if a hospital overflows, patients will be referred to another center."