Covid today Italy and flu, emergency doctors: “+ 20% hospitalizations in 10-15 days”

“In the last 10-15 days we have seen an increase in hospitalizations of 10-20% number, they are cases of flu and Covid”. Andrea Fabbri, the director of the Study Center of Simeu, the Italian Society of Emergency-Urgency Medicine, highlights this at Adnkronos Salute, taking stock of the situation of the Italian emergency rooms. “There is a seasonal trend that increases as we get closer to winter. There are many respiratory diseases but there are also positive ones for Covid and here the first difficulty opens, namely that of intercepting infections. Today we are working hard on all the resources in terms of men and organization to try to meet all the requests to keep waiting times in the emergency rooms low but, as we have reported, there is a shortage of doctors and emergency-urgency operators and this will increase the waiting times also in anticipation of December and Christmas “, he added. Simeu raised the alarm about staff shortages by demonstrating in Rome last week. “4,000 doctors are missing, representing about 30% of the organic structure necessary to make it work properly – remembers Fabbri – The emergency room is still the only facility always ready to respond to the needs of the territory, this creates various problems. phase of the pandemic we recorded a 20-30% decrease in accesses because people were afraid to go to an emergency room, but today everything has changed because the perception of the risk of contagion has dropped and therefore we are witnessing a substantial increase in cases . This creates difficulties for waiting times and response times. So – he reiterates – I launch an appeal: if it is not strictly necessary, it is better not to go to the emergency room but to call your doctor “. After the Simeu demonstration,” we were received by technical secretariat of the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza – continues Fabbri – to whom we have exposed the various critical issues that the sis emergency-urgency theme is experiencing. The ministry seemed sensitive to our requests which concern the immediate, therefore a response to the shortage of personnel, but also in the long term with a structural reform of the system “.