Press efforts for another 12 covid beds in intensive care in Brussels
Almost twice as many infections in a week and now also an increase in hospital admissions. The corona cloud over Brussels is swelling again. That more and more staff are absent and intensive care has not yet recovered from the previous wave. “We start from a very high base.”
December 27: 28 corona patients. January 1: 34. January 2: 40. January 3: 44. January 4: 45.
The confirmed days, medical director Danny De Clercq of the Iris Hospitals South saw the corona admissions grow strongly. He hadn’t seen a rise since early December. Of the 45 patients in his hospital are in the intensive care unit. “What will be the impact of the omikron variant on Brussels, where fewer people are vaccinated?” De Clercq wonders.
The week the number of hospital admissions in Brussels rose to 43 percent. The infections even faster: in a week they rose by 90 percent to an average of 1,859 new cases per day.
“I am concerned, because abroad we did not see such a rapid increase in hospital admissions due to omikron,” said chairman Marcel Van der Auwera of the Hospital & Transport Surge Capacity (HTSC) committee, which monitors the situation in Belgian hospitals. . “The problem is that we are in a gray zone. Right I have no clarity about how bad this will be for the hospitals.”
scale up
Without such models, hospitals do not yet know how best to organize themselves this month. According to a simulation by the Joint Community Commission (GGC) in mid-December, intensive care capacity could be full by mid-January. For the time being, 12 Brussels covid beds are still available there, according to figures from the HTSC.
On average, less often leads to an ICU admission than other corona variants. “But there are still more than 500 corona patients in intensive care in our country. That is a very high basis to start from for a new wave,” says Van der Auwera. This also applies to the Brussels base. The 97 occupied beds account for 44 percent of the total ICU capacity in the region. “And as long as we reserve more than 15 percent of all intensive care beds for covid patients, we’re delaying other care,” he says.
Shorter quarantines
Just today, the various health ministers in our country decided to relax the testing and quarantine rules. For example, the mandatory quarantine of high-risk contacts will be abolished for those who have already been fully vaccinated from a booster.
“There is already such a relaxation for vaccinated exercises. Anyone who tests positive, but has no symptoms and wants to work, will be deployed in the covid department,” says chief physician Olivier Vermylen of Brugmann Hospital in Laeken. “I don’t think the risk of a shorter quarantine period lies with the efforts, but with the wider population. It can lead to more infections and new hospital admissions. It remains to be seen how great that risk will be. We have too little data on that.”
In the Brugziekenhuis, the covid department in intensive care has been completely full since the end of August, with ten patients each. “A further increase will have an impact on our staff. Absences are increasing every month,” says Vermylen. no less than 30 to 35 percent of their healthcare staff is absent due to contamination from quarantine, but also due to burnouts from discharge. “In theory, you can of course scale up the covid beds in intensive care, but many hospitals no longer have the staff for that.”
Closed IZ beds
Several other hospitals were unable to respond to BRUZZ. Across Brussels, 54 of the 275 total ICU beds have already been closed, often due to staff shortages. “We have a shortage of nurses and we need our beds for other care. The surgeons want to resume their activities,” says Danny De Clercq of the Iris Hospitals South.
So at the federal level again all the worst case scenarios on the table, says Marcel Van der Auwera. “We are preparing with the same solutions as in previous waves: spreading patients, transferring and trying to open closed capacity, if necessary in medium care. Omikron celebrated New Year’s Eve. Now we have to solve it.”
table shows the number of occupied ICU beds per Brussels hospital. There are now 12 covid beds available in the entire region: