5-hour queue and leaked data expose chaos with flu and Covid in the interior of SP

Five-hour wait in private hospitals, leaked data that ended up in the police and delay in test results. The rise in cases of flu and Covid-19 in the interior of São Paulo exposes structures below demand both in the private network and in the SUS.

Seamstress Suelene Aparecida Teixeira, 62, from Ribeirão Preto, became ill at Christmas and was treated by the agreement at Santa Casa. Subsequently, the grandchildren and daughter became ill.

“They stayed from 9 am to 2 pm at the Unimed Hospital. [Unidades de Pronto Atendimento], I have acquaintances who were on hold for seven to ten hours”, he says.

Ana Paula Della Mota Dias, 36, a businesswoman from Ribeirão, says she scheduled a test at a pharmacy for her son on Monday (3), without any difficulties. “But today [quinta] my sister-in-law started having symptoms. When we went to schedule her test, there was only room for Tuesday.”

Unimed Ribeirão highlighted that the “cases have increased, but with less severity and without the need for hospitalization”, jumping from “a positivity rate of 11% to 39% until this Wednesday (01/06)”.

There was a 400% growth in calls for respiratory problems in the Unimed network; there were 5,000 cases in the first six days of the year alone, with peaks of up to five hours of waiting for patients with mild symptoms.

In São José do Rio Preto, the group jumped from 10 to 17 patients per hour (up 70%). Unimed in the city reported that there is no shortage of tests, but, because of the high, the waiting time for results went from 48 hours (2 days) to 120 hours (5 days). There have been around 500 tests a day since the year began.

Unimed Bauru reported that the movement in the emergency room “has grown 100% in the last 15 days.” In Araçatuba, the flow of people with symptoms rose to 238% in one week.

In a note, Hospital Unimed Araçatuba declared that the number of employees and doctors in the emergency room had doubled and that “it was also necessary to increase the number of receptionists to open patient records, public advisors and doormen to organize receptions and places in that patients expect”.

He also informed that the RT-PCR test, produced by a private laboratory, is already missing, that the antigen tests are low in volume and that there is a possibility of a lack of the Nasal Swab test for Covid-19 throughout the country, leaving the rapid tests as the main alternative.

Pedro Palocci, physician and president of Grupo São Lucas de Ribeirão Preto, said that, with the increase in consumption in Emergency Care, there has been a lack of intravenous Dipyrone for ten days. Tamiflu, on the other hand, is priced very high.

The group recorded a jump from 150 to 300 patients seen a day with respiratory problems. According to its president, in addition to expanding the team, it opened a new wing with 11 beds – patients with H3N2 and Covid-19 are being kept in separate spaces, says Palocci.

In the public network, Ribeirão hired more employees and activated a tent this Thursday to complement the service at the East UPA — despite being open to all emergency and urgency cases, it redirected the care of children to other units in the city. Araraquara also announced this week that it will reopen its field hospital.

In Bauru, the city hall and the Health Commission of the Chamber defined that all cases of respiratory syndrome will be treated from this farm in just one place, the UPA Geisel/Redentor. The other four UPAs in the city will no longer serve patients with respiratory problems. Starting next week, Samu will also start offering telemedicine (just call 192, choose option 2 and receive guidance without leaving home).

Rio Preto will set up a respiratory care center at the Swift Complex, because the UPAs are all full, and it is in the process of hiring employees and 40,000 antigen tests.

In the public network of Presidente Prudente, attendances at UPAS increased by more than 80% compared to the same period last year (they jumped from 250 to 480 per day), and the orientation is that people with symptoms look for basic health units to not to overload the UPAS with simpler cases.

With records of infection and 232 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in just two days, the city of Batatais, in the Ribeirão region, is still undergoing an investigation into the leakage of data from 100 patients treated by the municipal network.

The list, made available on a WhatsApp group of employees, began circulating this week on social media and contained full names, SUS registration number, address, test date and expected isolation time.

In a note, the Prefecture of Batatais reported that “a report was prepared and an internal investigation was established to investigate the leakage of information about patients who tested positive for Covid-19 in the last few days”.

Still in the note, he repudiated “the interference of data that are exclusively for internal control in the actions maintained by the Health Surveillance”, emphasizing that he will take administrative measures on the leak.

In Campinas, the city hall registered an increase in the issuance of virtual health certificates, a document created so that people with mild flu symptoms can be absent from work. The idea is to limit the spread of the virus by preventing people from circulating in the health network.

In the first six days of January alone, 414 documents were issued, a number higher than the 152 issued in December, 206 November and 171 October. Between Wednesday and Thursday alone, there were about 180 requests.

But the demand for care and emergency care in hospitals remains high, with queues in some places.

“Service has increased significantly. But what we have observed is an increase in demand, but not an evolution of severity as we saw in the other waves of Covid. It is a minority that needs hospitalization or more specific monitoring”, said the nurse of the Department of Health Surveillance, Priscilla Bacci Pegoraro.

According to the Municipality of Campinas, until Wednesday (5) there were 24 adult patients with Covid-19 hospitalized in the infirmary. The data points out that there is no confirmation of patients infected with the ômicron variant in the city.

In view of the picture, Mayor Dário Saadi (Republicans) authorized the emergency hiring of 163 health professionals. Being 28 doctors, 108 nursing technicians and 27 nurses.

Piracicaba also faces problems in its public hospital network after the holiday season.

According to municipal management, 2,682 visits were made to public hospitals in the city on Thursday, compared to 1,377 on December 24, Christmas Eve.

In the last 24 hours, 80% of SUS infirmary beds were occupied by patients with Covid-19. Another 37.5% beds were occupied in the private network.

In Sorocaba, between December and January, the city hall separated four sentinel health units to exclusively attend to cases of flu syndrome, with one of them working 24 hours a day, every day.