Last weekend, several hospitals in our country refused to receive patients from other hospitals, as agreed within the distribution plan. This is evident from a letter sent to all hospitals on Tuesday following the upscaling to phase 1A. According to De Standaard, it would concern fourteen hospitals.
–
From Wednesday, all hospitals in our country will switch to phase 1A, whereby they reserve a quarter of the beds on their intensive care unit for treatment of corona patients. On Monday there were 267 people in intensive care and according to the current trend, the cape of 300 could be exceeded on Wednesday. The upscaling to phase 1A, with 500 intensive beds available, must therefore be done immediately. “If we want to be ready on Wednesday, we have to switch today”, is stated in the letter to the hospitals sent by the Committee Hospital & Transport Surge Capacity of the FPS Public Health.
The upscaling of hospitals will of course have an effect on other concerns. According to Margot Cloet, top woman of Zorgnet-Icuro, hospitals will still continue to provide as much non-emergency assistance as possible. The intention would be to safeguard consultations and day hospital as much as possible. The Hospital & Transport Surge Capacity Committee of the FPS Public Health will in any case meet on Tuesday afternoon about the shutdown plan for normal care.
In order to ensure that regular care in all hospitals can continue as smoothly as possible, it was decided at federal federal level that hospitals can transfer COVID patients to other hospitals more quickly. “Unfortunately, we had to conclude last weekend that not all hospitals show solidarity within the spread plan,” the letter to the hospitals stated. “A number of hospitals state that they are full or are in danger of reaching their phase 0 and therefore refuse patients. Knowing that colleagues are already in phase 1B, this is unacceptable. ”
According to De Standaard, these are fourteen hospitals that were not keen to receive patients from outside their own region. Last week, Aalster’s mayor Christoph D’Haese also said that he wanted to refuse corona patients from Brussels and that the “limits of medical solidarity” have been reached.
– .
