“We expect to add 350 (more) beds in the next two weeks,” he said.
A second wave of aggression has seen Peru spend 40,000 deaths on Covid-19 on Tuesday, according to data released by the country’s Ministry of Health.
Infections are also spiraling up (with just 100,000 new cases reported in the last month alone), as officials warn of burn-out doctors and overflowing intensive care services.
It is not enough
Alicia Abanto, an official with the Peruvian Ombudsman’s office, told CNN that Sagasti’s announcement was a good step in the middle of the aggressive second wave, but it probably won’t be enough.
He explained that there are currently 1,829 of the 1,931 ICU beds in the country occupied. “There are only 102 beds available nationwide, and that figure is not enough for a country with 25 regions,” Abanto said.
Some regions do not have beds available in the ICU, while at least 16 regions have less than three beds available for incoming patients. “These are regions that could cover a million people,” Abanto added.
Scarcity could soon force doctors to make painful decisions. Dr. Rosa Luz López supervises the ICU at the Guillermo Almenara Hospital in Lima. Your team decides which patient gets a ICU bed when it is available.
“You’re doing what you can … that’s all, it’s like throwing a coin,” he told CNN.
So far, they have managed to triple the number of beds in their unit, but Lopez says it won’t be enough.
Meanwhile, Jesús Valverde, president of the Society of Intensive Care Medicine and doctor at Dos de Mayo Hospital in Lima, told CNN that he has asked health officials not to add any more beds, because there are not enough doctors to cover them. the bear.
Doctors are stretched too far across the country, he says.
The 50 beds in his hospital’s ICU beds are occupied and his colleagues are “exhausted, tired, sick,” he says.
Across the country, to cover the more than 1,800 occupied ICU beds would ideally require 1,250 doctors, he said. Instead, the “600 doctors in the country work in double or triple shifts to cover this deficit.”
Last week, a handful of Peruvian doctors went on a hunger strike to demand more investment in the country’s health sector.
Amid growing criticism, President Sagasti said on Tuesday that Peruvians should expect the first million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine to arrive in the coming days.
The vaccine has not yet been approved by Peruvian regulators, but Sagasti said the government plans to begin the vaccination campaign in February with front-line workers receiving the vaccines sooner.
The Peruvian government has also finalized two other agreements with Sinopharm for half a million doses in February and 1.5 million doses in March, he said.