In Ukraine's Odesa, due to the limited bed and staff capacity, medics are now forced in deciding the urgency of coronavirus treatment to hospitalize patients with severe COVID-19 only, Chief Physician at the Odesa Regional Hospital (2005-2010) Sergei Kalinchuk told a TV panel show on Thursday, TSN reports.
"In fact, what's already happening today is called triage. Because today we don't hospitalize patients in moderate severity cases," he explained.
Read alsoParliamentarian predicts when full lockdown possible in UkraineAccording to Kalinchuk, over the past day alone, ambulance teams were called about a hundred times for COVID-19. Of these cases, 70 patients required hospitalization.
"This is after the new hospitalization protocols were this week introduced by the Ministry of Health. So those were patients in a grave condition, with decompensated comorbidities, with severe hypertensive conditions and severe diabetes, who must be hospitalized by definition," he said.
The doctor suggests this will soon be common practice across country.
The bed and staff capacity in city hospitals is "very limited," and besides, soon "there will be a problem with resuscitation beds."
COVID-19 in Ukraine: Latest
As of November 12, a total of 30,704 cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Odesa region from the onset of epidemic. Of these, 22,578 patients are still undergoing treatment.
At the same time, no weekend quarantine will be introduced in Odesa, the city council's emergency commission secretary Oleksandr Tikhovsky said.
The official noted that, as of November 12, the "orange" level of epidemiological threat as regards the COVID-19 spread remains in place in the city. This refers to the previous model applied across the country of an "adaptive quarantine" which assigned settlements to red, orange, yellow, and green zones depending on the coronavirus spread risks.
On November 11, the Government introduced the so-called "weekend quarantine," imposing additional bans on businesses in a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19.
On November 12, local officials in at least two regional centers – Lviv and Rivne – said they would defy the new bans.
