Portuguese healthcare system on the brink of collapse as COVID-19 cases rise

LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s public health system on the verge of collapse as hospitals in areas worst affected by worrying increase in coronavirus cases quickly run out of intensive care beds to treat COVID patients -19.

“Our health system is under extreme pressure,” Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters on Sunday afternoon after a visit to a struggling hospital. “There is a limit and we are very close to it.”

The healthcare system, which before the pandemic had the smallest number of intensive care beds per 100,000 population in Europe, can accommodate a maximum of 672 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units, or ICUs, according to ministry data. of Health.

The number of people in ICUs with COVID-19 reached 647 on Sunday, according to the DGS health authority. The Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators has said the number of coronavirus patients requiring hospitalization is likely to increase significantly over the next week.

Three days after the start of a nationwide lockdown, the country of just 10 million people reported 10,385 new cases and 152 deaths on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections to 549,801, the death toll. increasing to 8,861.

According to the ourworldindata.org website supported by the University of Oxford, Portugal has recorded the highest number of coronavirus cases in Europe per capita in the past seven days.

Most of the new cases have been concentrated in Lisbon, where many patients from the city’s public hospitals have already been transferred elsewhere, including to health units in the country’s second largest city, Porto.

“We are already treating patients beyond our installed capacity,” said Daniel Ferro, director of Lisbon’s largest hospital, Santa Maria. “And we’re not the only hospital where this is happening.”

Garcia de Orta Hospital, across the Tagus River from Lisbon, said in a statement that the hospital may soon enter a “pre-disaster” phase as it no longer has beds for coronavirus patients .

(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)