Intensive care unit admissions have reached a record high, the Spokesperson of the State Health Services Organisation (SHSO), Charalambos Charilaou, has told the CNA. He said that the situation is particularly concerning, warning that the capacity of the health system is not unlimited.
Charilaou said that the number of inpatients with COVID-19 is at around 300 every day.
“The number of admissions in the intensive care unit keeps rising. We have broken any previous record, inpatients have reached 50, 14 of whom are under 50 years old and that is very alarming. The median age of ICU inpatients is 57 years,” he said.
According to Charilaou, the median age of inpatients in normal wards has reached 59. “We see that it has been increasing lately, which means that more and more old people are being admitted to hospital, the majority of them are not vaccinated,” he noted.
The SHSO spokesman said that there is a plan underway that provides for an increase in hospital beds to over 300 in normal wards and around 65 in the ICU.
However, he noted, “the capacity of the health system is not unlimited, it has its boundaries because besides Covid-19 patients there are the rest of the patients, who need to be treated in normal wards or in the ICU”.
Charilaou said that a large number of medical officers have been vaccinated, but noted that quite a few nurses have yet to receive a vaccine, urging them to get a jab immediately.
