In theory, Belgian hospitals have more than 2,000 intensive care beds but, unlike previous waves of Covid-19, this is not quite the case in practice.
There is indeed now too few staff to take care of them. For the moment, in intensive care units, it is estimated thataround 5% of beds are “lost”, that is to say unavailable to welcome a patient, reports De Standaard on Friday.
The trend is also noticeable in normal hospital services, with reduced capacity here too.
Unavailable beds are found in all hospitals, whether Brussels, Namur, Liège, Ghent or Louvain. Few infrastructures escape the shortage of personnel.
“Our margins are shrinking”, summarizes Marcel Van der Auwera, head of the Emergency Aid department of the FPS Public Health and of the Hospital & Transport Surge Capacity Committee – HTSC, which monitors the situation on a daily basis. “We do not have an overview of the contaminations of staff by hospital, nor of absenteeism, but the closed beds that hospitals communicate to us give us an indirect picture of their capacity.”
Marcel Van der Auwera acknowledges that some beds are not available also for technical reasons, as for the renovation of a wing.
with Belga – Photo: BX1
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