The corona figures are rising at a rapid pace. On Sunday, the National Coordination Center for Patient Distribution (LCPS) announced that 1,122 corona patients are now in hospital. On Saturday there were still 1042. In the intensive care units, 220 beds are now occupied by corona patients. It remains to be seen whether the outgoing cabinet will come up with new measures and, if so, which ones. What is already clear is that the upward trend of corona infections will continue for the time being.
With that prospect, the question also comes closer whether patients should be refused at the door, and what then? In Buitenhof a conversation with lung specialist Wessel Hanselaar. According to him, the rapidly increasing crowds in the nursing wards is a bad sign of what awaits the ICUs. After all, these regular wards are a portal from which people who later become sicker are transferred to intensive care. According to Hanselaar, the expectation that the wide availability of corona vaccines would prevent a new peak in healthcare has clearly not materialized. The lung specialist emphasizes that it is mainly the unvaccinated who end up in hospital. Apart from that, there is certainly no question of any group immunity.
A healthcare system that is cracking at the seams. There are a total of 18 IC beds in the hospitals where Hanselaar works. Of these, only 12 are still in use, because there is an acute shortage of qualified personnel due to outages. No less than 20 percent of employees are sick at home after more than a year and a half of the corona pandemic, a percentage that Hanselaar says has never experienced before. A large part of those dropouts have long-term symptoms, such as a burnout as a result of the pressure during the corona peaks. Another part is infected themselves, including employees who were pricked twice at the very beginning of the vaccination campaign: ‘Not so much that they have to go to hospital, but so sick that they can’t work.’
‘It is rising considerably,’ says lung specialist Wessel Hanselaar in #buitenhof on the number of coprona patients. ‘We are seeing a sharp increase throughout the Netherlands and in our region’. There is also a lot of staff loss. ‘IC is the most urgent, 20 percent at the moment.’ pic.twitter.com/Niew3E2igR
— Buitenhof (@Buitenhoftv) October 31, 2021
A number of countries, including Israel, have now started a new round of vaccination for the entire population. In the Netherlands, this so-called booster shot is currently only available for the most vulnerable. If it’s up to Hanselaar, everyone will soon be eligible for a third shot: ‘Because I think that you can raise the immune system to a higher level and protect people better. And with that, in fact, better protect society as a whole.’ Hanselaar would like to see the outgoing Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge already make the third shot available to healthcare staff, to prevent the dropout rate from getting even bigger, which puts the healthcare sector even further under pressure.
When asked when the stretch in healthcare will really be completely finished for Hanselaar in terms of influx of corona patients, he can be brief: it is now. Every day, the hospitals have to check whether someone else fits in at all, or whether planned operations can continue. It can happen a day in advance that an operation that has been on the agenda for a long time still has to be canceled. That squeeze becomes even more acute, knowing that hospital admissions are about two weeks behind the infections, which are therefore also increasing sharply: almost 8,000 infections were added on Saturday.
With this rising line of infections, combined with shortages in hospitals, continuing on the same path is not an option. And so something has to be done, the question is what. Hubert Bruls, mayor of Nijmegen and chairman of the National Security Council, is also a guest. He believes that in order to raise vaccination rates, more coercion must be exerted on the unvaccinated part of the population. For example, by expanding and stricter compliance with the CoronaCheck. In that case, it would be an option to only gain access to the workplace upon presentation of a valid QR code, also and perhaps especially for healthcare staff. Now employers are not allowed to ask for this, so a change in the law is necessary. A step that both Bruls and Hanselaar find ‘exciting’, but can be discussed. howls:
I have a great feeling for people who cannot have the vaccine for medical reasons, you really need tailor-made solutions for that. But if you basically choose: I don’t want to be vaccinated, then I respect that, but a principle is only worth something if it costs you something, if it also means something. And unfortunately I think at the moment that public health in general should weigh more heavily than just continue to respect what everyone thinks about it individually. I don’t think we can afford that.
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