Patients in the corridors, patients with severe symptoms treated in a chair, crowded cubicles with up to 5 people, queues of ambulances at the emergency door to drop off or take users, waits of up to 8, 10 or more hours to receive care or process an admission to the floor... This is the quick photo of the last few hours, according to health professionals, in hospitals such as the Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa (100 percent public) and other centers - Hospital del Mar, Bellvitge , Moisès Broggi, Taulí...-, also collapsed, these sources agree, after the receipts and visits of patients due to respiratory infections and viruses such as flu or covid have multiplied.
The Ministry of Health takes a lot of ink from this picture and makes sure that the current reality in hospitals and primary care centers is not as chaotic as some professionals paint it. "There is no collapse", repeats Francesc Xavier Jiménez, director of the National Emergency Plan of Catalonia (Planuc). "It is true that there is a lot more activity in the centers and that 45% of all viral infections treated are flu, but the system is prepared to deal with this situation", reassures Jiménez.
Statements that are far from the perception of health workers who are at the foot of the canyon. "What we are experiencing in the last few hours is reminiscent of the first phase of the covid pandemic", says Xavier Lleonart, emergency doctor at this hospital in Terrassa and secretary general of Metges de Catalunya. A health collapse, "which is not because it is generalized and affects other centers, is no longer very serious", adds Dr. Lleonart. And what hurts this doctor the most is that "the Catalan health authorities do not assume or admit the problem; this position only shows that in the Administration it has become normal for a patient to lie in a corridor for hours, with his dignity on the floor, or for doctors to take leave due to stress".
This conflicting perception of the current reality in healthcare centers for respiratory infections also has its own "war" of numbers. Health sources reveal to La Vanguardia that hospitals such as Moisès Broggi (Sant Joan Despí) have recorded peaks of up to 205 patients in the emergency room in a single day". Some of these patients have waited up to seven days to be admitted to the hospital. Jiménez justifies these waits (he does not admit that they are so long in a general way) due to the fact that now 60% of the cases that arrive at the emergency room are for respiratory infections that are not serious. "So, first you need to attend to the priorities", he remarks.
At the hospital in Terrassa, reports the secretary of Doctors of Catalonia, "we have reached the emergency room with up to 52 patients awaiting admission, without a room. Accommodating these patients means occupying two floors of the center". The saturation here has forced patients to be referred to other health centers.
Francisco Xavier Jiménez, meanwhile, manages less alarming figures. This senior Health official states that the incidence of patients in Catalan hospitals has increased by 10% in the last month due to outbreaks of flu and covid. And he adds that in recent days the increase in patients "has fluctuated between 2% and 3%". Therefore, Jiménez reiterates that the figures on health care in times of respiratory infections "are moving in the range that was planned".
Xavier Lleonart does not share it. "We are fed up because the Administration continues to do its homework. And now, with emergencies and saturated primary schools, it will be necessary to resort to heroic measures again, since there is no longer time to equip the system with more means or staff". Lorena, communications secretary of Infermeres de Catalunya, shares this thesis. At the CAP de les Corts, where he works, they have treated up to 80 patients in one morning. "This is barbaric, professionals are being asked to make an extra effort that is impossible to fulfill", he criticizes.
Léonart reveals, on the other hand, that the tension generated between professionals by what he calls the "collapse of the system" is already taking its toll. "We are starting to hear about many doctors leaving due to stress", he says. Francesc Xavier Jiménez admits that this staff is missing, but attributes it to absences due to flu or covid infections in the workplace. Not even here do the opposite poles of the problem coincide. Lorena, from Infermeres de Catalunya, regrets that the last person harmed "by this flagrant lack of foresight" is the patient, "who then pays for it with the health workers, who are the ones in the front row. The patient's discomfort never reaches the politician directly".
Where they all agree is when predicting that the peak of visits and income has not yet been reached. It is estimated that the situation in emergency rooms and primary care will become more complicated in the coming days. This upward trend is expected to reverse from January 15 or 20. And it also coincides with the fact that vaccination campaigns have failed this fall and winter.
