Emergency departments prepared to receive larger number of COVID-19 patients

Head of the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU) Raed Arafat announced on Tuesday that he had a video conference with emergency department workers to prepare them to deal with a larger number of patients suspect of or confirmed with COVID-19.

"We have held another video conference with the emergency departments in particular to prepare them to deal, once again, with a larger number of suspected or confirmed patients, with serious problems or not, who will arrive in the reception area. For that reason, we have asked the emergency department to get prepared for both investigations and circuits so that they can serve both categories of patients. The category of suspected and confirmed patients, but also the category of patients coming for reasons other than COVID, because there is unfortunately a very large number of patients coming in now. There is an average of 9,000 - 10,000 thousand cases per day as we speak, even without a major increase in COVID cases, which may occur moving forward and which will certainly be demanding on and even overburden the emergency departments even more," Arafat told a news conference.

He also said that he requested the verification of the oxygenation capacity of these departments. "This is why we have also requested the part of the ventilation capacity, the oxygenation capacity to be checked and, moreover, to make sure that we have everything we need as consumables for children, (...) to be sure that we can also provide assistance to the children in case that will be necessary," said Arafat.