Four states have ICU bed occupancy of 80% or more

The escalation of new cases of Covid-19 at the beginning of the year increased the pressure on hospitals and caused four states to reach the level of 80% or more in the occupancy of ICU (Intensive Care Unit) beds.

The scenario is similar to that recorded in July 2021, when the second wave of Covid-19 began to ebb in the country.

Ceará and Goiás are the states with the greatest pressure on the public health system and registered an occupancy of 87% of beds for critically ill patients. Then come Pernambuco with 86% and Espírito Santo with 80%.

In Pernambuco, the government has announced the opening of new beds for patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome to mitigate the new peak of influenza and Covid-19. With 952 beds, the state recorded a waiting list of seven patients this Monday (17).

The new increase led the state government to implement restrictive measures for the events sector, limiting the capacity to 3,000 people, and to determine the requirement of the vaccination passport for entry to bars, restaurants, cinemas, theaters and museums, until 31 January.

The explosion of Covid cases is also reflected in testing. In two weeks, the percentage of people who took the test and had the disease detected went from 3% to 23%.

For access to free tests in Recife, the population faces up to four hours of waiting in queues. In private laboratories, the main reports are of difficulty in scheduling and delay for the result to be released.

As in Pernambuco, the scenario in Goiás is one of alert given the high proportion of hospitalized patients. In the state public network, there is 87% occupancy of ICU beds for Covid-19 aimed at adults, which are 163 in all. Meanwhile, 32 people were waiting for an ICU bed this Tuesday (18), according to the government of Goiás.

Pressure on the health system led the administration of the capital of Goiás to ban Carnival parties. In addition, the decree published this Tuesday (18) limits occupancy in any establishment to 500 people, especially affecting large events. A part of the civil servants of the prefecture was authorized to return to remote work.

Ceará, which registered an occupancy rate of 86.6% on Monday, also suffers from low numbers of doctors, nurses and technicians.

The removal of about 15% of public health professionals with flu-like symptoms, including Covid-19, since last December, made the state government open selection for more than 150 temporary vacancies for doctors of various specialties.

In Espírito Santo, the percentage of occupancy of ICU beds for Covid-19 is 80%. To scale the new escalation of the disease, the City of Vitória will make available from this Tuesday (18) 470 rapid tests of Covid-19 per day, which can be scheduled over the internet.

A year after the collapse of the health system and the deaths of patients from suffocation in hospitals, Amazonas also registers a worrying scenario, reaching the occupancy mark of 77% of public ICU beds directed to patients of the new coronavirus. The number of intensive beds occupied jumped from 18, at the beginning of the month, to 58, this Monday.

Still, hospital pressure is far from matching the scenario of last year. At the peak of transmission, the public and private networks had 753 ICU beds and 1,977 clinical beds occupied, with a waiting list of more than 500 patients.

According to the government of Amazonas, the moving average of cases rose by 1,007% in the state between January 1st and 13th. The highest growth, 2,493%, was identified in Manaus. Only this Monday (17), 2,674 cases were confirmed in the state.

Experts have said the vaccine helps stop the spread of infections, preventing the chaos that occurred in the state with the gamma variant last year. They say, however, that urgent measures are needed to avoid new deaths and the overload of health professionals.

So far, Amazonas has applied 5.6 million doses of the vaccine against Covid-19. About 72% of the population over 12 years old has a complete vaccination schedule.

With the advancement of the omni, the government decided to postpone the face-to-face start of the school year in state public schools to February 14th. The samba school parade was cancelled.

“We already predicted an exponential increase in cases, but not so great. The ômicron variant has a very high transmissibility and causes a much smaller amount of severe conditions, but it is different from not causing severe conditions”, says doctor Anoar Samad, state secretary. of health.

In Bahia, the occupancy rate of ICU beds in the public network was 65% this Tuesday (18). Of the total of 545 beds available, 352 are occupied by patients with Covid-19.

According to the government of Bahia, about 80% of hospitalized patients are people who have not completed the vaccination schedule.

In the state of São Paulo, the occupancy rate of ICU beds for Covid reached 54% this Monday (17), with an upward trend. The occupancy rate was 39% on January 10th and 25% on the first day of the year.

In the capital, the scenario is more worrying, with an occupancy of 69% of beds for critically ill patients with Covid-19.

“The last time the capital of São Paulo had an ICU occupancy rate of 69% was at the end of June 2021, a scenario in which we still did not have a large part of the population vaccinated with the complete regimen”, recalls Wallace Casaca, coordinator of the SP Covid-19 Info Tracker platform, created by researchers from USP and Unesp with support from Fapesp.

The state has opened new beds to meet the demand. The number of available Covid-19 ICU beds increased from 4,021 to 4,455 between January 7th and 17th, an increase of 11%.

“Although less lethal than the other variants, the omicron has an unprecedented rate of contagion, leading to a ‘tsunami’ of infected people in a short period of time. In numbers, this translates into a large volume of people daily looking for of hospital beds, causing an overload in the health system”, says Casaca.

The Secretary of State for Health said that, preventively, it slowed down in January any redirection of exclusive beds for coronavirus care and, if necessary, will expand exclusive care.

The state of Rio de Janeiro faces a more peaceful scenario, with only 10% of intensive care beds in the state network occupied by patients with Covid-19.

On the other hand, there is pressure in the capital: the occupancy rate of public ICUs rose rapidly and reached 64% this Monday. The number of patients admitted to wards and intensive beds for Covid more than tripled in six days – from 163 to 624, between January 11 and 17.

State and capital suffer a large drop in health professionals absent due to the disease. All elective surgeries were suspended for a month in the state network, due to the lack of employees (which already hits 20%), the risk of contamination and the reduction in blood donations.

In the municipal network, 4,888 were dismissed in less than 20 days, forcing the units to reorganize their work schedules and leading the city to hire 1,280 people to reinforce the service. Another 400 are in the admission process.

The federal network is already feeling the consequences — Rio has six federal hospitals, the largest number in the country. Cardoso Fontes hospital suspended emergency care last Friday (17), because 45% of professionals have Covid or influenza.