Coronavirus in Romania: Number of surgeries in local hospitals reduced by 80%

The coronavirus pandemic has led to changes in the local healthcare system, and this is expected to also affect, indirectly, the patients with other serious illnesses.

According to a document signed by health minister Victor Costache, which is currently circulating at the level of public health departments, the number of surgeries in Romanian hospitals is recommended to be reduced by 80% in March, and the outpatient consultations and treatments by 50%, to preserve resources that may be needed later in treating coronavirus patients, surgeon Bogdan Tanase, president of the Alliance of Physicians, said in an interview with Hotnews.ro.

He also said that patients with other conditions would also be indirectly affected by coronavirus because they will have reduced access to hospitals or doctors. However, “it all depends on what kind of coronavirus growth curve we will have. If we’ll have a very steep growth curve, as it happened in Italy, there will be many critical patients in a short time, which will exceed the capacity of intensive care beds. And basically, when the intensive care is full, the rest will have to stop.”

Measures will thus be taken to keep resources that could later be used for patients infected with coronavirus. Surgeries require blood, intubation tubes, and all kind of other resources, Tanase explained.

Bogdan Tanase also said that this is a new situation for the current generation of doctors, as well as for their teachers, considering that the last pandemic of this kind was 100 years ago. He explained that this is a situation the doctors know how to manage only in theory, as they've never had to deal with something like this before.

As for the protective equipment, the president of the Alliance of Physicians said that “there have been several calls and the situation is a bit better now,” but it could get difficult if there will be an increase in the number of cases.

Another big problem is that, at this time, only doctors in infectious disease hospitals have access to coronavirus tests, which means that the doctors in the other hospitals cannot test their patients.

“We should have wider access to diagnostic tests for the coronavirus,” Bogdan Tanase said.

(Photo source: Shutterstock)