According to Kuipers, there is no question of ‘code black’ for the time being, whereby no bed is available for a new corona patient and no more planned operations take place. In that scenario, doctors have to decide which patient will and which patient will not receive an ICU bed.
Transfer to Germany
In this way, Kuipers says that he nuances the sounds of hospital administrators, who state that code black is close at hand. This is how the presidents of the hospitals in Limburg spoke last week of “code black at the local level”.
Kuipers: “We can still receive patients, albeit with the help of spreading patients and help from Germany.” The first Dutch corona patient is expected to be transferred to Germany tomorrow, says Kuipers.
However, the protocol for that scenario is being prepared. Next week there will be a large-scale ‘code black exercise’ in which all policymakers involved are participating. “That says enough about the urgency,” says Kuipers. He also emphasizes that postponing regular care already leads to “distressing situations”.
In total, there are now 882 patients in the ICU, of whom 470 corona patients. That is why the IC capacity is being scaled up to 1150 beds, in the future this could increase to 1350 beds.
During the first wave, in the spring of 2020, the IC peak was 1424 beds. At that time, the number was not broken down between corona and non-corona patients, but at that time there were hardly any non-covid patients.
Unvaccinated
According to Kuipers, the pressure is more on the nursing wards than on the ICU. “16 percent of the clinical beds are occupied by corona patients, but because they stay there for a relatively long time, roughly 28 percent of the clinical care is used by them.”
The figures from the association for pulmonologists show that more than half of the corona patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, while 88.3 percent of the over 18s have had at least one shot. Of the patients who have been vaccinated or previously infected, 70 percent have an underlying medical condition, such as problems with the immune system.
According to Kuipers, it is still too early to draw conclusions about the effect of the recent corona measures. “What we do know is that the trend should turn downwards this week. If that does not happen, you have to look at more measures. As long as the number of new infections does not fall, the hospital occupation will not decrease either.”
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