MADRID (AP) – As soon as the lifeless body moves away silently on a stretcher, a cleaning battalion moves to the intensive care unit. In a matter of minutes, the bed where the 72-year-old woman struggled for more than two weeks for another breath is cleaned, the glass walls that insulate her are disinfected with a corner.
There is little time to reflect on what has just happened, as death gives way to the possibility of saving another life.
“Our greatest source of joy is obviously emptying a bed, but because someone is discharged and not because they have died,” said Ignacio Pujol, head of this ICU in Madrid. “There’s a small space there for someone else to have another chance.”
As an increase in infections again contrasts with the Spanish public health system, the Isabel Zendal nursing hospital used by Pujol, a project considered by many to be an extravagant vanity company, is having a new opportunity to prove its usefulness.
Named after the 19th-century Spanish nurse who received the smallpox vaccine in the Atlantic Ocean, the facility was built in 100 days at a cost of 130 million euros ($ 157 million). more than double the original budget. It has three pavilions and support buildings in an area the size of 10 football fields, which give an image between a small airport terminal and an industrial warehouse, with ventilation air ducts, medical beds and state-of-the-art equipment. The original project consisted of 1,000 beds, of which about half have been installed so far.
The Zendal opened to a roar of fanfare and critics competing on December 1st, in the same way that Spain seemed to cushion a wave of coronavirus infections after the summer. By mid-December, he had only received a handful of patients.
But Spain on Monday recorded more than 84,000 new COVID-19 infections, the highest increase in a weekend since the pandemic began. The country’s overall account is for 2.5 million cases, with 53,000 deaths confirmed by viruses, although excessive mortality statistics add up to more than 30,000 deaths.
When the contagion curve intensified after Christmas and New Year, the Zendal has been busy. On Monday, 392 patients were treated, more than in any other hospital in the region, with 6.6 million.
The increase in Spain comes after similar increases in infection in other European countries, especially in the United Kingdom after the discovery of a new variant of the virus that experts say is more infectious. The London Nightingale, one of Britain’s temporary hospitals designed to relieve pressure on the country’s overflowing healthcare system, has also reopened for patients and as a vaccination center.
Senior Spanish health officials insist they have found no evidence that new variants that wreak havoc elsewhere contribute in any way to their own rocket infections.. Some experts argue that claiming that the country’s limited ability to sequence coronavirus cases is distorting reality and that a new order of permanence at home is needed.
On the ground, the increase in hospitalizations for the virus already exceeds the peak of the second resurgence. Nearly one in five hospital beds has a patient with COVID-19. The new disease also occupies a third of the country’s ICU capacity and non-urgent surgeries are already being called off.
United by some medical experts, left-wing politicians and labor unions accuse the Conservative government of Madrid of spending on hardware to raise votes instead of strengthening a public health system they have underfunded for years. Investing in contact tracking and primary care earlier, they say, could have avoided the need for a Zendal.
“Instead of the success they boast, filling this makeshift hospital represents a huge failure for those at the forefront of the pandemic response, and also a failure for all of us as a society that could have done better,” he said. say Ángela Hernández, spokeswoman for the main union of medical workers in Madrid, AMYTS.
The last straw of the unions, he said, was the regional government firing medical staff who refuse to leave their positions in the usual hospitals when reassigned to the Zendal.
“The project has been nonsense from start to finish,” Hernandez said. “Some beds without proper staff do not make hospital.”
Fernando Prados, Zendal’s manager, says he doesn’t care about the debate, but the 750 patients cared for over the past month and a half have already taken significant pressure off the rest of the hospitals.
“We’ve already contributed in one way or another,” Prados said. “We know we will continue to have patients with COVID and, once the pandemic is over, this infrastructure will be here for any other emergency.”
After the automatic glass doors, patients recover in eight-bed modules, leaving little room for privacy, but providing better control of possible complications in their recovery, said Verónica Real, whose challenge as a main nurse has been organizing staff teams from other hospitals.
“Some of the health workers arrive with a certain anger at all the noise in our hospital,” Real said. “But once here, the attitude changes completely.”
Zendal officials say that a modern ventilation system renews the air of the entire installation every 5 minutes, which contributes to a safer working environment. But they are very proud of the expansion of the intermediate respiratory care unit, where patients receive different types of assisted breathing to overcome lung inflammation.
The head of the unit, Pedro Landete, says that by admitting patients who can get worse in one of their 50 highly equipped beds, they reduce the number of people who later need the most demanding intensive care.
José Andrés Armada arrived at the facility with mild symptoms after his entire family became infected despite what he said was a very careful approach to the pandemic. But the 63-year-old’s health deteriorated rapidly and last week he was about to be intubated in one of Zendal’s dozens of ICU boxes.
“I know the economy is something that needs to be safeguarded, but health is more important. We should already be closed. You can’t have bars and other places open,” the former businessman said.
“I never imagined I could attack you that way.”
___
London AP reporter Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak