LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s public health system is on the verge of collapse as hospitals in the areas most affected by a worrying increase in coronavirus cases are quickly running out of intensive care beds to treat patients with COVID-19.
“Our health system is under extreme pressure,” Health Minister Marta Temido told reporters on Sunday afternoon after a visit to a struggling hospital. “There is a limit and we are very close to it.”
The health system, which before the pandemic had the lowest number of intensive care beds per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe, can accommodate a maximum of 672 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units or ICUs, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
The number of people in ICUs with COVID-19 reached 647 on Sunday, according to the health authority DGS. The Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators said that the number of patients with coronavirus who need hospitalization is expected to increase dramatically in the next week.
After three days of national blockade, the country of just 10 million people reported 10,385 new cases and 152 deaths on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections to 549,801, with the death toll rising to 8,861.
According to the website ourworldindata.org supported by the University of Oxford, Portugal had the highest number of coronavirus cases per capita in Europe in the last seven days.
Most of the new cases were concentrated in Lisbon, where many patients from the city’s public hospitals have already been transferred to other locations, namely to health units in the country’s second largest city, Porto.
“We are already treating patients beyond our installed capacity,” said Daniel Ferro, director of the largest hospital in Lisbon, Santa Maria. “And we are not the only hospital where this is happening.”
The Garcia de Orta Hospital, across the Tagus River from Lisbon, said in a statement that the hospital could soon enter a “pre-catastrophe” phase, since it no longer has beds for patients with coronavirus.
Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Jonathan Oatis