Coronavirus Intensive Care Hospitalisations Falls to Lowest Since October

THE number of coronavirus hospitalisations in intensive care has fallen to the lowest figure last seen in October of last year. Cases of coronavirus infection have fallen this month by 28 per cent and the global number of admitted in critical condition is at October levels with 1,655 Covid patients. This translates to 16.8 per cent of the critical beds in Spain being occupied by people with coronavirus. Although the situation varies greatly among communities, in Galicia it is 3 per cent and in Madrid, 35 per cent. Therefore the decrease in hospital admissions has already led to beds being dismantled: there are a thousand fewer places than on February 1, when the peak of ICU admissions was reached this year with nearly 5,000 people hospitalised.

As reported by El País, before the pandemic, the Spanish health system had about 4,400 critical beds, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Health, with data from 2017. With the surge of the health crisis, this infrastructure fell short and at the end of March, the ICUs had expanded to hospitals, to resuscitation units, to operating rooms, to ad hoc rooms with oxygen intakes and respirators.

The figures at that time are more confusing as there was no report of critically admitted patients at the time, but a count of accumulated cases, but even this data crystallises the flood of patients: some 5,800 patients with Covid, at the end of March 2020, they had already been through the ICU. Madrid, one of the few communities that reported the prevalence, almost tripled its structural occupation at that time with 1,500 cases of Covid in intensive care.