‘Israel’ is leading in daily COVID-19 cases per capita. On Friday, more than 53,000 people were registered as sick with the virus, but experts believe the real numbers are much higher.
“Although the Omicron variant is less severe, it is very contagious and thus we see more people being admitted to hospitals”, said Professor Arnon Afek, the co-chairman of the ‘Israel’ Association of Hospital Directors and former director-general of the Health Ministry. “What we also see is that it impacts children, and we have some worrisome information coming from abroad that it affects teens as well”, he added.
Coupled with such “usual” winter diseases such as influenza and other respiratory viruses, the coronavirus has put tremendous pressure on Israeli hospitals, primarily because the thousands of medical personnel that are supposed to be treating patients are either in isolation or are sick with COVID-19 or other diseases themselves.
“As a result, the existing medical staff needs to juggle between COVID-19 and non-COVID patients. Instead of giving attention to eight patients, a nurse is now splitting her focus between 13 people. Of course, it is not the quality of service we used to give in the past when the situation was normal.”, said Afek.
Yet, splitting that attention is not an easy task, because COVID-19 patients require special care. For the sake of comparison, a regular intensive care unit (ICU) normally operates 8 doctors and 16 nurses. For COVID, the numbers are higher, some 20 and 95 medical professionals respectively.
‘Israel’ currently has more than 2,400 coronavirus patients in hospital, 1,010 of them in critical condition. To treat those, as well as many other patients seeking medical attention, they will need equipment but the problem is that – just as with personnel – it is stretched way too thin, and is located mainly in the centre, while the periphery is struggling.
Source: Agencies
