With record numbers of COVID-19 patients occupying all intensive care beds, the Czech Republic began transferring patients to other countries, the first of them to southern Poland on Tuesday.
A 68-year-old woman was transferred to Raciborz, Poland, from the town of Usti nad Orlici, in the Pardubice region. Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek said that another six patients from a different region will go to Germany.
Pardubice was the first of the country’s 14 regions to declare that all intensive care beds in its five regional hospitals were occupied by critically ill COVID-19 patients and there was no room for more. The same thing happened later in the Plzen region, while several hospitals in other places have had to transfer their patients to other health centers.
“The job of a nurse is difficult at any time,” said Jirina Spelinova, head of nursing for the neurosurgery sector at Pardubice hospital in the region of the same name, 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Prague.
“But it is much more difficult during the pandemic,” Spelinova said. In addition to having to work in protective gear, the staff “are so busy that they don’t have time to eat, drink or, sorry to say, go to the bathroom.”
Health Minister Jan Blatny predicted that this week will be “the most critical” for overwhelmed hospitals.
According to the ministry, 8,478 COVID-19 patients required hospitalization on Monday, 1,789 of them in intensive care. The seven-day moving average of daily deaths has risen in the past two weeks from 1.44 per 100,000 residents on February 22 to 1.88 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University. It is the highest figure in the world.
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