Chilean health system on the brink of collapse …

After resisting the onslaught of the first wave, Chilean healthcare system on the brink of collapse, with 97% intensive care bed occupancy, due to the sharp increase in coronavirus infections.

At the Guillermo Grant Regional Hospital in Concepción (500 km south of Santiago), the beds of its intensive care unit (ICU) have been quintupled, transforming the pediatric services to be able to care for the covid-19 patients who occupy today ‘hui instead.

“Week after week, we are converting critical beds. We started with 14 and we have grown to 78 ”, explains Alejandro Torche, director of this hospital which takes care of a large part of the population of the city of Concepción, the third largest in Chile.

In addition to the redeployment of the pediatric ICU, special rooms have been created and staff have been specially trained to care for the nearly 200 coronavirus patients currently in hospital.

The second wave of infections had a harder impact on the country’s health system after the surge in infections from March, which occurred alongside the rapid progress of the vaccination process. Chile is the third country with the highest number of people who have received at least one first dose (7.4 million out of a total population of 19 million).

“During the first wave, the health care system also went into crisis, and the difference with the situation we know today is the attrition of health personnel and the fact that the system does not only receive patients. covid-19, but also all the pathologies which have been reported and which are now complicated and require intensive care beds, ”Francisca Crispi, president of the Metropolitan Medical College, told AFP.

Today, 25% of healthcare workers are licensed and around 30% are patients with pathologies other than coronaviruses found in ICUs.

Unlike last year, the second wave affected all regions of Chile in the same way, making it impossible to transfer patients.

“All of these factors add up so that we now have a particularly complex situation, perhaps more complex than in June (last year), which was also critical,” adds Crispi.

With record figures of more than 9,000 new infections per day, Chile has accumulated nearly 1,100,000 infected people and nearly 25,000 deaths.

Occupancy register and beds

To cope with this scenario, 1,500 additional beds have been added to the Integrated Health Network, which includes both public and private health.

As of the start of the week, the system had 4,158 intensive care beds, of which 4,023 were occupied, which equates to 97%. Of the total number of patients in critical beds, 3,203 have been hospitalized for complications derived from the coronavirus.

“There is a lot of tension between all the components of the network, but it continues to be resolved because the network of intensive care beds has expanded, using the last remaining resources”, explains Jorge Ramírez, regulator of the Service. emergency medical care. (SAMU) and academic from the University of Chile.

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