Hospitals across the globe are witnessing an increase in COVID patients as cases rapidly rise. Some doctors are warning they are already becoming overwhelmed, others are preparing for things to get much worse. What happens in hospitals when there is no capacity left? And is that really a risk in the COVID-19 second wave?
DAUK;s Rinesh Parmar, was quoted in the article, warning that the diminishing number of critical care beds isn’t the biggest threat facing the country, but a crippling lack of staff.
“Nightingale hospitals are no use if there simply isn’t any staff to fill them,” he tells Newsweek. “Nurses and doctors are not being redeployed like they were in the first wave. There’s no magic haul of staff waiting. When the first wave hit people from across the [National Health Service] NHS agreed to do what was needed. But intensive care patients need one-to-one care and that’s what we won’t have going into the second wave. Finding staff to man the Nightingale hospitals now is going to be incredibly difficult.”
“We are being told that hospitals are falling into the traps of what happened in the first wave in not being prepared”
The article can be found here.
