Mônica Bergamo: Occupation of ICUs by Covid in SP leads government to state of attention on beds

The advance of Covid-19 led the São Paulo government to turn on an alert signal for the need to trigger new ICU beds. Doctors advising Governor João Doria (PSDB) have already spoken of the risk of occupation reaching 90% in the coming weeks, if the pace of new cases continues.

THERMOMETER

The state had this Monday (10) 1,567 patients in the ICU and 3,100 in the ward. The occupancy rate of beds in intensive care units was 35% in the state average and 42% in the metropolitan region of the capital. A week earlier, the rates were, respectively, 25% and 32%.

DAY TO DAY

“We have to pay attention, not worry. It is to be attentive to the numbers and the speed of hospitalizations”, says the State Secretary of Health, Jean Gorinchteyn. He rules out the possibility of collapse, but says he does not rule out the possibility of reactivating beds. “State networks have operational capacity.”

“We had an increase, a more significant occupation. We are attentive to the need to expand beds in certain regions. The monitoring is daily, so that we can take any possible strategic measure”, he adds.

HOW IT WAS

According to Gorinchteyn, the system has never been saturated, even at the worst peaks of the pandemic, since 2020. In less serious stages, management reduced the number of Covid ICU beds by 20%, but the measure stopped with the arrival of new variants. “We haven’t made any progress in demobilizing beds,” he says.

how will it be

The diagnosis that, if the spread of the virus continues high, it will be necessary to review the bed plan in São Paulo has been shared behind the scenes by experts who give advice to the government. One of the assessments is that the next two weeks will be decisive.

FLOW

Gorinchteyn says that hospitalizations both in ICUs and in wards are due to Covid and also to H3N2 influenza, but positive news is the reduction in length of stay, which he associates with vaccination. Longer hospitalizations put pressure on the system and forced the opening of beds.

NEEDLE

“Now we already have these beds. We wouldn’t need to create new ones”, says the head of Health, who emphasizes the urgency of increasing vaccination coverage. The main problem, according to him, is the delay of part of the population to seek the second dose and the booster dose. Immunization of children is also seen as crucial.

ON THE NETWORKS

_{with JOELMIR TAVARES (interim), LÍGIA MESQUITA, BIANKA VIEIRA e MANOELLA SMITH}