ICU staff are “the family” of Covid-19 victims

By Thursday evening,  May 7, Panama registered  225 Covid-19. deaths and some 8,000 infections More than 900 infected are in isolation and 335 hospitalized, 85 of them in intensive care. There are more than 4,500 recoveries.

The fact that Panama has the highest number of  Covid-19 deaths and cases in Central America, its is due to the high number of tests carried out, 39,000 to date which has prevented hospitals from being overwhelmed by the pandemic.

Julio Sandoval,  the Ministry of Health National Coordinator of Intensive Care for the virus, is one of the doctors on the front line in the fight.

He visits hospitals daily to see the most seriously ill patients He works ad honorem. And at first  stayed in a hotel for fear of infecting his family.

Paying tribute to the staff in ICU’s he said: ”Going to an intensive care unit to care for the sick through Covid-19 is like entering a war zone, in which we want to save a life, it doesn’t matter if we are affected by saving a life,” says Sandoval.

“The intensive care staff becomes the family of the patients, they fight with them to the end, they pray with them, In reality, they are their family, we suffer the disease with the patient from the time they arrive until we remove them from the unit or until they die, “says Sandoval.

Ana Belén Araúz, deputy medical director of the Santo Tomás Hospital in the Panamanian capital, comments that “there have been moments of great uncertainty and uneasiness and we must continue working for the patients.”