Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata
The pandemic, that is, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world all of a sudden, changing infection rates or rather increasing it every day without leaving the world to think of the ways to fight with the unknown enemy, the virus. This created a lot of panic at the beginning of the year (2020) since the healthcare system were neither aware of the ways to deal with the patients infected by the virus, nor were there enough beds to accommodate such a huge number of patients. Recently, the new normal has led to a lot of changes in this area and the situation can now be controlled in a better way, thus resulting in a decrease in the infection rate per day.
The examination of the datasets maintained by the National Health Service (NHS) showed the signs of a quick adaptation of the system, cancelling elective surgeries, dividing departments for general and acute (G&A) patients and critical care (CC) patients while also deciding on the staffs, beds, ventilators and other stuff based on such needs. Newly qualified medicals staffs are recruited, private hospitals are also involved in the service for the selfless treatments of the patients. All these have resulted in fewer deaths due to the pandemic while putting the entire system go through a basic question: is the system capable enough to deal with other diseases along with the virus at the same time? The answer is quite controversial. In England, it has been noted that the number of patients can be maintained only when the number of COVID patients is 1550 daily. In other words, the healthcare professionals will ignore the other disease requiring urgent attention if the number of patients of COVID-19 goes out of control.
This might lead to more deaths due to all other diseases than due to the pandemic. Thus, better planning and a proper system are required to maintain a balance and to avoid biases coming in the way of treating patients.
Also read: A Paradigm unleashes to target Ovarian Carcinoma
Source:
Might read: McCabe, R., Schmit, N., Christen, P. et al. Adapting hospital capacity to meet changing demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Med 18,329 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01781-w
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