Less than a month after Christmas, staff in the intensive care unit at Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar are working non-stop.
At one bed, several staff are turning a patient face down to facilitate breathing, while others check an X-ray showing lungs whitened by pneumonia. In another corner of the unit, a physiotherapist moves the limbs of a sleeping woman.Soon eight staff surround a patient on a gurney who has just arrived from the general ward. “Got an oxygen tank?” says one. “Where’s the intubation equipment?”“We knew this was going to happen after Christmas because the restrictions weren’t very tight.
Other patients in need of critical care are being treated in the surgical resuscitation units, reducing the hospital’s capacity to carry out any non-urgent surgery. “In November, the intensive care unit wasn’t completely full of Covid patients but now it is. At the time, we had two floors devoted to Covid, while now we are filling a fourth,” he told AFP at his top-floor office which has a view over Barcelona beach.Wearing her own clothes again, 71-year-old Dora Lopez is waiting to go home after being discharged following 40 days in hospital.
“We are all emotionally affected. And when you go out into the street and see people not observing the restrictions, you just don’t understand,” she told AFP.According to a study of 10,000 Spanish medics carried out by Hospital del Mar researchers, nearly half — 45 percent — suffered mental health issues following the first wave of the pandemic.
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