INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR OF THE HOSPITAL: Without vaccines, we are on our knees, it is a gift! Another winter can be the same – Topky

The Stará Ľubovňa district was among the top five districts in black and the situation has not improved since then. On the contrary. The critical situation in them has been going on since October 18, almost 90 percent of the hospitals are unvaccinated and the staff is very exhausted. Without vaccines, Slovakia would not have managed the third wave.

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The epidemiological situation continues to deteriorate: LOCKDOWN is only a temporary solution! We need vaccinations

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Almost 90 percent of patients are unvaccinated

The director of the Ľubovňa Hospital described the current situation. The hospital has 33 patients hospitalized, four of whom are on artificial lung ventilation, and six of the total number of high-flow therapy patients have two children under the age of two. As many as 29 patients, or 88 percent, are unvaccinated. Four patients at UPV are also unvaccinated and have a mean age of 52 years. The director talked about the difference compared to the second wave and how he perceives the third wave in an interview with Topky.

What about capacity? Do you still have beds available?

As far as oxygen beds are concerned, we can also provide the capacity to exceed the mandatory reprofiling, if necessary, we can increase them by some six beds, but these are no longer oxygen beds. However, not every patient needs oxygen, as there are also COVID-positive patients with other diseases who need to be isolated.

Above the limit set by the Ministry of Health, we had to reprofile 15 children’s beds, because there was a period when we had up to six children in the children’s ward. As for UPV, there are four beds and this is a constant condition. Both spatially and personally, because we also manage non-modal AROs with UPV, where we have three other fans for non-modal patients.

How do you perceive the course of the disease in patients? Is it worse than the second wave? Some doctors say it’s a more aggressive virus than the second wave.

Definitely. I can confirm that aggression and virulence, because there are more of those patients than in the second wave. At that time, we had a maximum of 34 patients. In the third wave, for example, last week we also had 45 patients. The course is more difficult and we see this mainly in patients at UPV, where the success rate of getting out of a difficult situation is somewhere around 20-25 percent, while in the second wave it was around 45 percent.

How do you personally perceive the situation around the third wave? It was initially said that the number of positive or hospitalized people should increase rapidly, but then decline rapidly. However, we have been seeing an increase in cases for several weeks now and the situation is really critical and the decline does not seem to be rapid. Is it more pressure on hospitals?

Bratislava is feeling a difficult situation for maybe two weeks. After Dušičky, those who travel home to the center or east of Slovakia probably brought COVID back to Bratislava on holidays. However, we have been fighting with it for the whole of October. It’s not just an outbreak and a rapid decline. Now it is practically widespread almost evenly throughout Slovakia.

We have been fighting here for 6 weeks, people are tired and have had enough. The fatigue also stems from the fact that last winter was difficult, in the summer we had to catch up with acute care, so there were no big holidays. Now those people are getting another dose. I must say that the third wave is a wave of the unvaccinated. I am not saying that the vaccinated do not become infected, but the course of the disease is much easier, they do not end up on oxygen beds and not on ventilated beds at all.

I can’t imagine that we wouldn’t have the gift of the vaccine we received in the winter, when, with Slovakia’s 45 percent vaccination, of course, to the shame of the weak, today we have 3,200 occupied beds and 270 fans are occupied by metal diagnoses. Imagine that the 45 percent where hospitalization is negligible is added … I’m just afraid to think that it would be around 5,000 hospitalized and 400 ventilated patients. Slovakia does not have such technical or personnel capacity. We would be completely on our shoulders.

What happened happened. Some countries are at the level of 80-90 percent vaccination and both socially and health-wise pandemics are easier. We succumbed to various explanators, hoaxers and antivaxers. Were it not for the 45 percent of responsible people who could be vaccinated, Slovakia would be on its knees today.

Do you think vaccination rates will increase?

We also vaccinate in the hospital, and today (Thursday, November 25, editor’s note) three teams vaccinate with us. If necessary and people want to come, we can vaccinate 400 people. About 70 to 80 people can be vaccinated with the first dose every day. It is gradually rising. I wonder how it will be before the holidays.

We have a high emigration for work in the district. Many people travel here to work abroad. It will be very difficult to get back to the surrounding countries, as they are beginning to require full vaccination when crossing borders. Maybe then there will be pressure on vaccinations before the holidays. However, people tend to look for a single-dose vaccine, where full vaccination is paid after three weeks so that they can return to work. Perhaps there is a predominant interest in vaccination, not because they are worried about their health or because they want to help society as a whole, but it may be an individual interest in getting back to work abroad.

What do you think about accepting an emergency and introducing a lockdown? Do you think this will help the situation? Of course, provided that the measures are complied with.

We have an emergency, lockdown is one of the emergency measures. If it were adhered to, the virus would not disappear, nor would new cases, but it would certainly slow down. The pressure on hospitals would not be so great either. Personally, I think that politicians should argue less with each other and listen to experts more. These measures should have been taken earlier. We didn’t have to be in the situation we are in now.

There was also a big fight near the schools. Whether to close them or not. Would you lock them up?

You know, it’s such a double-edged sword. If we close schools, what will grow up for us? What generation, when he hasn’t been to school in two years? It is not just about the decline in the quality of education, but also about the habits we cultivate among young people, but also among young people from poorer social backgrounds. If they take it lightly, what kind of generation will we have here in 10 or 15 years?

On the other hand, I recognize that COVID is spreading among children. The disease is asymptomatic, something is captured by the antigen test, but not everything. We know that the seizure success rate is 50 to 50, and it is also a question of how the smear was made while it was made, because it was certainly not done professionally many times.

It’s neither white nor black. Where possible, schools should be kept open. The holidays are coming in, maybe it would be good if they started earlier and extended slightly. I also monitor it in flu epidemics. When schools closed in each region for two weeks, it certainly helped. It’s hard to answer.

Do you have any idea when the third wave situation might return to normal?

Well, sure, we’ll go on vacation again in the summer. I personally think that before the winter of next year we will be in the same situation as today. I’m not a virologist to say that the virus mutates so that it doesn’t show up again, but if there is another mutation, there’s no reason to think that this situation won’t happen again next year.

The virus will also catch those who have been vaccinated, and those who have been vaccinated naturally will have been around for a long time, so I think it will happen again. But since we have a terribly high percentage of unvaccinated people over the age of 50, I think that hospitals can be filled again next year.

The Czechs have already switched to the Austrian model, they will be obliged to vaccinate paramedics, social workers, possibly members of the army or police officers. It may reach people over the age of 60. That is what we need.

If it’s like the flu, it’s okay, but don’t let it kill you and don’t paralyze healthcare. Often the unvaccinated say that we make a difference in health care between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. No, we make a distinction between infectious and non-infectious, because we have to keep white medicine even for the unvaccinated, who have other diagnoses, for various injuries, accidents and the like. We have to keep those white beds for the unvaccinated, but also for the whole population.

Although he is infectious, he is infectious for some time, but then he is also unvaccinated non-infectious, but we have to treat him. Well, we don’t have him anymore and neither does anyone have to treat him. The beds are free, but they are not human. You cannot reprofile the surgical ward to the metal ward. Surgical nurses can still handle the care, but surgeons have already had a difficult diagnosis. Neurologists already have a problem with this. Today we have very narrow specializations.

Would you be responsible for vaccinating at least in at-risk groups?

I won’t tell you yes or no. Let me give you an example. We have 85-86 percent vaccinated paramedics at our hospital. If I take into account that some of the unvaccinated have been vaccinated in a natural way, the result is that I have all the people at work.

I have people in charge, they go testing twice a week. Apparently everyone does it responsibly, because no one wants to infect a colleague. And they are probably responsible, as out of 550 employees, there is currently one healthcare worker on the covide PN.

For paramedics, I think that if we didn’t invent hoaxes, such as that a vaccinated young woman would not get pregnant or miscarry if they didn’t listen to it, then today paramedics are probably vaccinated all but the diagnoses they can’t get vaccinated for.

It is a paradox that in DSS we have forced to vaccinate almost all clients, but there is a large percentage of service staff who are unvaccinated. I think it’s a large group of vulnerable clients and it’s a little irresponsible.