Covid-19 Rips Through European Countries Spared in the Spring, Straining Hospitalshttps://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-czech-hospitals-idUKKBN26Z219https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-rips-through-european-countries-spared-in-the-spring-straining-hospitals-11602865379WARSAW—A second wave of Covid-19 cases in Europe is tearing into countries that escaped the first, with health systems running short of the one resource they can’t run without: staff.One of Poland’s largest hospitals, in the city of Krakow, installed enough beds and ventilators to treat a surge of Covid-19 patients, but has started to run out of workers in recent weeks as the number of national cases has doubled roughly every three days. Orthopedists, urologists, surgeons, neurosurgeons and gynecologists have donned scrubs to help treat those sick with the coronavirus.
“We are a modern hospital, very well equipped,” said Marcin Jędrychowski, director of the University Hospital in Krakow. “But none of this matters when you start to face a shortage of staff.”Before the pandemic, Poland—home to generations of emigrants moving west—had the lowest ratio of health-care workers to citizens in the European Union: 237 workers for every 100,000 people, according to a 2018 study by Eurostat.
Now it has an outbreak growing faster than it can lay out and staff beds. In the western Polish town of Czarnków, workers were still constructing the walls of a Covid-19 ward when the first ambulances showed up with patients needing oxygen.
... Over the past two weeks, Czech Republic has been one of Europe’s hardest-hit countries on a per-capita basis, with nearly 10,000 people testing positive Thursday in a country of 11 million.
On Thursday, its government said its hospitals would run out of space by the end of the month, and called in the military to construct a field clinic in a Prague convention hall.Czech Republic was among Europe’s first to set up a tech-driven contact-tracing system, but the system has fallen apart as case counts have soared. Hungary is confronting a testing shortage, while testing centers in the Polish capital of Warsaw have faced dayslong delays.
“We have to build extra capacity as soon as possible,” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told reporters Thursday. “We have no time. The prognosis is not good.”
... thousands of medical students would be called up to help.
... “This is the consequence of the really good situation that we had,” said Alexandra Bražinová, an epidemiologist at the University of Comenius in Bratislava, Slovakia. “Many people would say, ‘Why do you try to scare us? Covid is not such a bad thing. I don’t know anybody who would be positive.’”
... Hundreds of Poles have held anti-mask-wearing protests, with some claiming the pandemic is a moneymaking conspiracy by drugmakers. At one hospital in Poland’s city of Wroclaw, visibly sick Covid-19-positive patients have refused to wear masks and shouted at staff, a doctor there said.
... Meanwhile, the resulting case count is taking its toll on staff. Until Aug. 20, only four doctors and three nurses in Czech Republic were infected with the virus, the country’s Institute of Health Information and Statistics said. Since then, 259 doctors and 433 nurses have tested positive.
At the Clinic of Infectious Diseases and Hepatology in Wroclaw, nurses have walked off their shifts and never returned. Staff have retired.
... Projections by Czech government experts have put the number of hospitalised at 4,500-10,750 by the end of October.
Of the country’s 4,011 intensive care beds 958 were free as of Monday, a national register showed, with 207 designated for COVID-19 patients. There were also 982 free beds with oxygen support for COVID cases.... “We can physically add beds, I expect we would get equipment as well, but there is nowhere to find personnel,” said Martin Zatloukal, head of intensive care within Pribram’s general ward.
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When adjusting for population, the number of new coronavirus infections in Europe has now overtaken that in the United States, with Europe reporting 187 new Covid-19 cases per million people, based on a seven-day average, compared with 162 new Covid-19 cases per million people in the U.S.
In total, Europe, which includes the 27 European Union countries and the United Kingdom, is reporting an average of roughly 97,000 new cases per day, up 44% from one week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
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As Covid-19 Surges Across Europe, Countries Fear Drug Shortageshttps://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-19-surges-across-europe-countries-fear-drug-shortages-n1243737Less than 24 hours after confirming his positive Covid-19 diagnosis, President Donald Trump received the first of five doses of remdesivir, a drug that hinders the ability of the coronavirus to replicate within the human body.
That same day, at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second largest city, pharmacist Nicole Hunfeld sent out an email she had hoped never to write.
“Beste allen,” it began. “Dear all, we have just received a message from the RIVM that there will be a shortage of remdesivir.”
The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, or the RIVM, is tasked with distributing remdesivir in the Netherlands. ... But as infection rates began rising precipitously across the continent once more in early October, demand in this small, northern European nation outstripped supply.
“No new courses can be started until we hear that there is stock again,” Hunfeld’s email continued. “Would you like to share this information with on-call colleagues and physician assistants?”
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Nearly 10% of Vatican's Swiss Guard Positive for COVID-19https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/health/2020/10/17/covid-news-winter-surge-no-vaccine-likely-before-election/3687384001/The Vatican says someone who lives in the same Vatican hotel as Pope Francis has tested positive for the coronavirus, adding to the 11 cases of COVID-19 among the Swiss Guards, who serve as ceremonial guards at papal Masses, guard the Vatican City gates and protect the pope.
The Vatican said Saturday that the resident of the Domus Sanctae Marthae has moved out temporarily and is in isolation, as are all the people who came into direct contact with him.
Pope Francis chose to live there permanently after his 2013 election, shunning the Apostolic Palace, because he said he needed to be around ordinary people. The hotel has a communal dining room and chapel where Francis celebrates Mass each morning.
At 83 and with part of a lung removed when he was in his 20s due to illness, the pope would be at high-risk for COVID-19 complications.