Swiss doctors sound alarm over sharp rise in Covid patients
An intensive care team looks after Covid patients at the Triemli hospital in Zurich on December 10, 2020.
Keystone / Gaetan Bally
A Swiss doctors’ association has warned of a “very steep” rise in the number of seriously ill Covid-19 patients - mostly unvaccinated - in intensive care in the past few days. Many of them are young people.
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“Health teams in intensive care units, who have been extremely busy for the past 18 months, risk being again exposed to increased pressure,” the Swiss Society of Intensive Medicine said in a statementExternal link on Thursday.
It said it could not rule out a further shortage of intensive care staff, which would lead to a worsening situation in intensive care units.
The number of daily hospital admissions across the country has risen tenfold from 2-3 in July to around 30. On Tuesday, it was reported that 500 people were being treated in Swiss hospitals for Covid-19. Around 70% of intensive beds are occupied, 14% by Covid patients. The number of Covid-related deaths remains at a low level.
In an interview this week, Tanja Stadler, the new head of Switzerland’s Covid-19 science taskforce, said the current virus situation was “very difficult”. She said that if the number of hospital admissions doubled again three times in the next month, as it did over the previous month, “then we will be at the same level as during the worst period of the second wave [last autumn]”.
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