QUARANTINE BACK – 16 deaths in one day ICU crisis

QUARANTINE IS BACK after 16  deaths in one day

Just one week after controls on mobility were eased on June 1,The Ministry of Health   (Minsa)  has reimposed  restrictions and once again  shopping will be limited to alternate days for males  and females at hours determined by the last digits on ID documents. a setback back to reactivating  Panama’s economy.

The move which will take effect on Monday was announced Saturday. June 6 after 16 people died of the coronavirus in 24 hours and reports emerged of an ICU crisis.

Nadja Porcell, national director of Public Health, said  that the decision was adopted after evaluating the report of the new positive cases in recent days,  showing relaxation in the use of the mask and the failure to comply with physical distancing.

The daily death toll is the highest since the virus arrived on March 9. It is also the epidemiological week with the most cases since the start of the pandemic: 2,986 registered between May 31 and June 6.

The announcement coincides with the fact that the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Dr. Arnulfo Arias Madrid Hospital Complex) is operating at its maximum capacity. The director, Enrique Lau Cortés, said that the occupation is at 90%.

In the hospital’s ICU  there are about 100 beds, mostly enabled since the first case of Covid-19 appeared.

Eight days ago the complex which cares for 87% of the population, reported that of the 190 intensive care beds it has throughout the country, 54 were available; while of 254 mechanical fans, a total of 148 were unused.

Now in the Hospital Complex, of some 100 existing intensive care beds, occupancy reached 90%.

The director of the CSS, Enrique Lau Cortés, said that they have begun to adapt 30 more intensive care beds in an area close to the Emergency Room of the Hospital Complex. “

Lau Cortés said he is “hopeful” that the Minsa will put into operation the modular hospital so that they can use it as an “escape valve”, since there are 20 intensive care beds and 80 hospital beds that they could also operate as intensive care.

Julio Osorio, intensivist doctor and secretary of the National Negotiating Medical Commission, explained that the Health indicators establish that in ICUs the occupation must not exceed 85%, because otherwise there would be a risk of saturation.

In the case of the Hospital Complex, Osorio indicated that the ideal is for the ICU to exclusively serve patients without Covid-19. “What we recommend is that in the Hospital City a space be enabled to only have patients there with the Covid-19,”