“The wave will be smaller than it is now, but corona will return in the winter,” says Hans Kuidsen, intensivist at the Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital in Tilburg. “You have to go to seasonal workers in healthcare.” Kuijsters is thinking of a system where people can work as ‘reservists’ on the ic in the winter.
Peter van der Voort, head of intensive care at UMC Groningen, would like to create a spare IC in his hospital. “In normal times you can use it for something else, but when the need arises, as ic. For that you need a flexible layer of staff that also has an IC basis. ”
Crisis
“Every flu season in the hospital is actually a minor crisis,” says Simone Gielen, acute care medical leader and intensivist in Bernhoven in Uden. “I expect you to get a wave with Covid and influenza. Of course, there will be a vaccine, but we do not yet know how well it works, for whom and what it does to spread the virus. ”
Van der Voort also calls a recurring winter wave ‘a realistic scenario’. “It also depends on the vaccination coverage. An advantage may be that corona mutates less quickly than flu and that vaccines may therefore be more effective.
Meanwhile, hospitals have their hands full with the second wave. On Friday, 2,034 corona patients were in the hospital, more than 400 more than two weeks ago. During the second wave, the hospitals already helped 17,000 patients in normal wards and 3,000 people in the ICU. That is now 40 percent more than during the first wave, according to figures from the NICE foundation.
As a result, it squeaks and creaks, say those involved. “We have very little fat on the bones,” says Armand Girbes, head of IC at UMC Amsterdam. “There are too few doctors and nurses. That really has to change. ”
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