Flemish hospitals are tired of preferential treatment for corona patients | Abroad

The pressure on Belgian hospitals is increasing again due to the fourth corona wave. Last week, an average of 172 Covid-19 patients were admitted daily, a third more than the week before. According to the latest figures from the health authorities, there are now 1,899 people with Covid-19 in hospital, 364 of whom are in intensive care, an increase of 42 percent. On Tuesday, more than 10,000 infections were counted in one day for the first time this year. Hospitals now reserve a quarter of their IC beds for corona patients.

‘Ethically difficult to justify’

“Suppose your capacity is really limited and the only remaining bed is one of the reserved Covid beds. And there is an urgent acute case, then we will record it and put it in that Covid bed,” says chief physician Kristiaan Deckers of the GZA group of three hospitals on the Antwerp channel atv. “I can’t ethically justify not doing that.”

The Belgian Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke says he understands “the frustration in the hospitals: it is great, and it is extremely hard.” But he rejects the choice not to keep any beds free. “If you do not reserve beds, the Covid patients will soon be in the hallway,” he said in the VRT radio program De Morgen.

“The agreements we are talking about have been made by the hospital sector itself. If they don’t do it together, the system will collapse,” said the minister. Vermassen assures that “a Covid-19 patient who needs intensive care will receive it.”

Due to the pandemic, operations in Belgian hospitals have also been postponed for months. For example, the hospital in Leuven last week removed a man whose brain tumor was to be removed from the operating room at the very last moment because there was no room on the IC. The operation was therefore postponed in March.

“It is something that you as a doctor hope you never have to do, but with the new corona wave, we are again faced with very difficult choices every day,” neurosurgeon Johan Van Loon of UZ Leuven told Radio 2 Vlaams-Brabant. “There is a shortage of beds in the regular wards, but also in intensive ones because we again have to keep 25 percent beds free for Covid patients.”

—