An internal document of the Hospital de A Coruña recognizes that personnel without experience in critics work with seriously ill patients
The situation of intensive care at the Hospital de A Coruña offers the other side of the official discourse of the Xunta. While his Minister of Health, Julio García Comesaña, affirmed the existence of "reasons to be optimistic" about the incidence of the coronavirus in Galicia, an internal email from the center defined the moment as "terrible" and acknowledged that staff "without experience in critics" he was taking care of intensive care patients.
Feijóo hides the first collapses of the ICU and masks the data while transferring critical patients by road in search of free beds
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The document, to which elDiario.es has had access, was sent to the doctors of the Coruñés University Hospital Complex (Chuac) this Wednesday, February 3 and it describes the hard work they face. "Although infections begin to decrease minimally, hospital pressure and especially the pressure of critics continues to be high," he says, "so in the coming weeks we will have to continue with the current plan of dedicating many human resources to critics" .
The latest data released by the health area of A Coruña and Cee, corresponding to February 4, assure that there are 79 patients in the intensive care units of the public hospital in A Coruña and 256 admitted to the plant. In the last four days, 22 people have died. To face this unprecedented increase in COVID patients - neither in the first nor in the second wave of the epidemic was such a level reached - the center has set up operating rooms or resuscitation areas where critical patients are treated.
But an intensive care unit needs specialized staff. This is what the mail refers to when it mentions the "human contingent" that has moved to one of those improvised ICU blocks, "many without experience in critics (nurses, technicians, orderlies, pharmaceutical supervisors, physiotherapists ...)". Thus, it is the doctors who "have had the courage and patience to teach them", while admitting that the "delivery" of the templates "is to take off your hat." With this extra effort of the workers, these beds have managed to get ahead "with limited means and few resources" and have "been improving".
"In this terrible moment that we are living and of rapid changes that we have suffered in recent days due to the imperative need to provide an outlet for critically ill patients," says the document, "I want to thank you for your unlimited professionalism and generosity. He points it out just after stating that, due to the care load, "the rest days will be minimal or none and in order in each hospital." In addition, the Chuac has had to reorder the shifts on duty for doctors and nurses. The email also reports that there are new transfer respirators and adds a link to an 11-minute video on YouTube that explains how they work.
Feijóo's accounts
Still this Thursday, the president of the Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, again used his peculiar accounting system to affirm that Galicia is one of the four Spanish communities with less pressure in intensive care, according to him 31%. The figure is obtained by counting 785 ICU beds -includes those of the private health, which has not intervened, and those that would be in a position to mount-, when in reality there are less than 300 currently active. This was certified by the Servizo Galego de Saúde (Sergas) last January 28 to questions from elDiario.es: then there were 193 patients in 68% of the available places.
In hospitals like the one in Ferrol or that of A Coruña, the situation is extreme, as as unions and workers denounce.
