For the first time in months, Campania has the highest number of Covid positives in the entire country and, for the first time, it also sees an increase in the number of hospital admissions in intensive and sub-intensive care.
With yesterday's seven hospitalizations in intensive care, Campania has 132 occupied beds, thus reaching the highest point since December 14, while the spread of the virus remains just above one: a value that marks the transition from the linear to the exponential level.
Maurizio Di Mauro, infectious disease specialist and manager of the Azienda dei Colli which includes the Cto, the Monaldi and the Cotugno, in an interview with Il Mattino today, takes stock of the situation declaring that the situation is still under control, the emergency room is still managed without particular difficulty but the sub-intensive unit is full.
“The places are freed up mainly thanks to an increased work of managing the turnover with three meetings a day in each department to understand who can be transferred from one unit to another, and who can return to home care – explains Dr. Di Mauro – The places are freed up in the morning and are occupied in the evening. However, we are witnessing a progressive shift in the request for care towards the intensive care area. In practice everyone, even in ordinary hospitalization, needs oxygen support”.
"Given the crowds and gatherings seen in the city in recent weeks, continues manager Di Mauro, it is inevitable to expect an increase in requests for hospitalization and, if necessary, we would have to retrace everything that was done at the peak of the second wave. Thanks to vaccines, and greater attention to prevention, we hope to never reach that catastrophic scenario again."
According to Di Mauro, the increase in hospitalizations has been a constant over the last 20 days: "a progressive growth that has then become stationary for a few days only thanks to the perfect management of admissions and exits", as the doctor defines it.
“It must be said – he specifies – that unfortunately, lethality also counts in freeing up some places, especially in critical areas. An intensive care unit has a lethality rate of about 50%. Since the beginning of February, we have had many people over eighty who are critical. We have also admitted a person who is 100 years old. We hope to save her but there is no shortage of younger patients, between 50 and 60, healthy and without other pathologies, who arrive here by their own means and with already severe forms of the disease. It is difficult but we are holding out”.
On the feared third wave, Di Mauro says that after a glimmer of hope between December and January, "we have slowly returned to the brink. We are managing a difficult situation with a sub-intensive unit that is always full and few free places. The third wave could be this and not necessarily a peak. Based on the forecast models, we expect a further peak by mid-March, before the physiological reduction with spring and summer".
Then there is the English variant that is certainly circulating from what can be deduced from the health surveillance project that is being implemented with the Zooprophylactic Institute and Tigem.
In fact, according to Mauro, "something has changed in recent weeks: we see many critical cases and few with a benign outcome. But this could be the outcome that depends on various other variables, such as being a regional hub, the increase in the average age of hospitalized patients but also the concomitance of seasonal factors.
In recent months we have seen mostly pneumonia. Before there was a certain graduality, now they are almost all complex forms. This requires more timely intervention and a higher level of intensity of care. All complex, serious and grave cases”.
Article published on 24 February 2021 - 09:39
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