A Nicosia general hospital intensive care unit is being emptied to reserve beds for coronavirus patients, it was announced on Wednesday as Covid-19 admissions continue to surge.
The Nicosia hospital has two ICUs, unit one and the more recently constructed unit two. The latter, which has a capacity of between 24 to 28 patients, already exclusively treats patients with coronavirus.
State health services organisation (Okypy) spokesman Charalambos Harilaou told the Cyprus News Agency that due to the rapid increase in ICU admissions, patients with other health issues have been moved from unit one to private hospitals or Limassol general hospital to make an additional 17 beds available for Covid-19 patients.
Moreover, a third intensive care unit with a capacity for between 14 to 18 patients, has been created to cater for urgent cases that are not coronavirus related.
“Our goal is to evacuate ICU one from cases concerning other health issues and to use this unit exclusively, which has all the necessary equipment and all the required staff, for Covid-19 cases,” Harilaou said.
According to Harilaou, it is expected that admissions of patients with coronavirus will increase even more after the holidays.
“In relation to admissions, we see cases arriving seven to 10 days after diagnosis or the appearance of symptoms and we expect that in the coming days we will have an increase in admissions,” he added.
“If we make a simple calculation of the total number of positive cases in the community, about 20 per cent may be over 60 years old and it is expected that a number of these people will need treatment and some of them will need to be treated in an ICU or high-dependency unit,” he said.
He said that Okypy’s action plan is for 200 beds for coronavirus patients. “We still have room, but we have made sure that in case these beds are filled and there is a need to increase them, to be able to do it.” This implies, however, he said, “that we will further reduce the volume of services in other diseases so that we can transfer staff to treat these cases.”
“The system is under a lot of pressure,” he said. He added that Okypy evaluates daily its action plan and takes all the necessary actions where and when any problem arises.
“The situation is manageable but marginal due to the very large number of patients and it is expected that in the coming days the situation will worsen, we will have increased cases if we take into account the large number of positive cases in the community,” he said.
On Tuesday 154 people with coronavirus was treated in state hospitals, 42 of whom in serious condition. The health ministry said on Tuesday that the average number of patients in hospital was increasing daily and ranges between 140 and 155 per day.
