A 65-year-old patient ended up intubated outside the ICU on March 19 at Laiko Hospital. The complaint by the president of the hospital workers« union, Tassos Antonopoulos, about the loss of the man, who For three days, he was hooked up to a portable ventilator in a regular hospital bed., waiting at EKAV waiting list to find a bed in the ICU, describes the impasse of the policy of non-support ESY followed by the government.
At Laiko Hospital, three people are still being treated for severe Covid, intubated outside the ICU, two for the third day and the third intubated a few hours ago, according to T. Antonopoulos.
Overall, 105 seriously ill patients are being treated on ventilators in the Athens basin outside the ICU – 60 Covid and 45 non-Covid.
The 65-year-old at Laiko Hospital is not the first Covid patient but the second to end up intubated in a regular clinic, according to the president of the hospital's employees.
The first was a 40-year-old foreign woman who ended up in the second wave of the epidemic, as no ICU bed was ever found for him to be treated.
All this is the sole responsibility of the government, as hospital doctors (OENGE) reported to the Supreme Court Prosecutor's Office yesterday.
«We are doing everything humanly possible.»
The Director of Laiko General Hospital did not deny the news of the loss of our two fellow citizens, emphasizing that the hospital only has «simple COVID beds,» and if intubation is necessary, «we give the order to EKA and the transfer is carried out.».
Regarding the incidents in which two people were intubated but could not be transported in time and ultimately died, the Director of Laiko Hospital stated:
«The virus is so dangerous that time is of the essence. It was not a failure on the part of the hospital or the National Ambulance Service. The system has done everything in its power to cope, and we are doing everything humanly possible.».
In the midst of the third wave of the pandemic, during the on-call shift at Laiko Hospital, all 90 beds in the hospital were full to capacity and at least seven patients had to be transferred to wards on stretchers, according to Nikos Orfanos, head of the Laiko COVID unit.
