Corona's second wave hits the continent hard: Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and other countries set a new daily record in the number of infected • Belgium has announced it will evacuate non-life-threatening patients from hospitals, the Netherlands and Poland
Hospitals across Europe are warning that they will soon be forced to reduce medical services and hospitalization for non-Corona patients, due to the steep rise in morbidity from the virus on the continent.
Reuters reports that health authorities in almost all European countries, from Poland in the north to Portugal in the south, have expressed concern about a crisis in their health infrastructure - if the second wave of the Corona is not halted.
Photo: Reuters
Even today (Wednesday) the number of infections in Western and Eastern European countries is breaking records in many countries.
In Italy, a new daily record was set with 15,199 new infections per day.
In the UK, 26,688 new carriers have been diagnosed in the last day, which is also a new record.
In the Netherlands, 8,764 new cases were reported today - an increase of 589 from yesterday, and 59 deaths in the last day.
In France: 26,676 new infections per day, in Spain: 16,973, in Russia: 15,700, in Poland: 10,040, in Belgium: 9,679, in the Czech Republic: 8,841, in Romania: 4,848 and in Germany: 4,765.
Belgium, which is battling what its health minister called a "contagion tsunami", has already announced that the country's hospitals will stop all non-essential medical procedures, and more countries are about to announce a similar step.
"If the rate of infection that has been in the last week continues - the suspension of various medical procedures in the hospitals will be inevitable," said Julio Pascual, director of Del Mar Hospital in Barcelona, Spain.
The Dutch health authorities said that if the number of corona patients in the inpatient wards continued to increase, it would be necessary to reduce by 75% the treatment of "normal" patients in non-life-threatening situations, at least until the end of November.
"We have reached the red line when it comes to occupying beds in hospitals," said Water van der Horst, a spokesman for the Dutch Hospital Association NVZ.
Similar warnings were issued by the Czech health authorities.
In Poland, which is suffering from a severe outbreak with more than 10,000 infected a day, the country's health minister has warned that about 30% of newly discovered patients will need hospitalization, and that hospitals will not be able to cope with the load.
In response to the data, a number of hospitals in Germany, one of the countries that dealt with the first wave most effectively, announced that they would agree to take patients to intensive care units from other countries.
Germany has the strongest health care system on the continent, and in the first wave it absorbed many patients from the Netherlands and other countries.