Covid, about 10,000 hospitalizations, but half of them are for other diseases

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The fifth wave of Covid does not leave – On Wednesday, there are still 107 thousand injuries and 72 deaths – And even if it causes much less pneumonia than previous waves, it risks returning hospitals to a state of chaos already this summer because in a few days there will be more than 10,000 people in hospital with Covid: Wednesday there were 8,220, of whom only 325 In intensive care.

Taste the potential chaos as other treatments stop for Italians already struggling with waiting lists that may lie ahead next fall if we don’t wait soon for a cover with directives or guidelines to manage numbers that may be much higher than now : Omicron 5’s problem is not in serious patients , who are increasing but contained – Wednesday +2 intensive treatments – also confirmed by the Director of Prevention at the Ministry of Health, Gianni Reza: “Fortunately, today’s Covid pneumonia is also rare, thanks to the fact that Omicron is the least aggressive variant of Delta » The point is the fact that of the more than 8,000 Italians who are already in hospital today and positive for Covid, about half have found out after a swab that was taken possibly in the emergency room or before hospitalization for another illness: in practice, they are asymptomatic or Mild symptoms They went to the hospital for another reason.But now, after discovering the positivity, they must be isolated from other patients in the department of cardiology, surgery, etc.

A logistical problem that is not quite easy to manage and which has already emerged in the fourth wave, the first problem of Omicron which marked many infections and many patients in hospitals not only for “Covid” (i.e. respiratory diseases related to the virus) but also “with” Covid ( That is, it was found positive after the swab in the hospital). With the regions that requested the removal of patients “infected” with “Covid” from the number of admissions.

To depict the day-to-day impact of different patient ‘types’, there is Fiasu, the consortium that brings together managers of ASL and hospitals thanks to monitoring its ‘sentinel’ hospitals: the latest report published on Wednesday recorded 6 total hospitalizations (+19%) in the past week with an even greater increase In cases ‘for’ Covid (+24.5%) compared to those ‘with’ Covid (+13.7%). For the first time, the first exceeded the second, but in any case, if 52% are hospitalized due to respiratory symptoms, then up to 48% are hospitalized for other reasons.

How can we deal with so many asymptomatic patients in the wards? “In light of the experience of these two years and this last period when we were the first to document the existence of these two types of patients, we are working on a document with models and best practices that we will hand over to the Ministry,” warns Giovanni Migliori, President by Fiaso. He explains: “We will have to change our model of care, not just by opening Covid wards to patients with respiratory illnesses. After the arrival of vaccines, there are two potential models for Covid patients: one with fewer hospitalizations providing isolation of positivity in areas, cohorts or bubbles, within individual divisions dedicated to different diseases, and the other – demonstrating the best – which works better with a larger number of hospitalizations such as The current ones involve opening multidisciplinary wards to isolate positive patients. Practically speaking, creating a large “dirty” area where patients are received but taken to hospital for other reasons.”