"We'll run out of hospital capacities in 24 hours": Make vaccination of health workers compulsory

Photo: Tanjug/Tara Radovanovic

This morning the Palace of Serbia hosted a meeting between Minister of Health Zlatibor Loncar and directors of Covid hospitals, after which the director of the Clinic for Infectious and Tropical Diseases of the University Clinical Center of Serbia, Goran Stevanovic, addressed the media and said that hospitals will run out of capacities to accept new coronavirus patients in 24 hours, after which new capacities must be provided.

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"The situation is not easy at all. Beds are on the verge of full occupancy for Covid patients. There is room for the next 24 hours. After that, new capacities must be opened. The influx of patients has not been decreasing for days. There is still a large number of patients who require urgent hospitalization, large amounts of oxygen and the number of admissions to intensive care units is growing. All of this put together speaks in favor of a situation that is on the brink that the healthcare system can withstand," said Stevanovic:

"We have more and more patients who are younger with more severe clinical pictures. A number of them come after 8, 9, 10 days of home treatment."

He reiterated that the only measures that give results are distancing, wearing protective masks, and vaccination.

"The problem is that these proven measures are not applied sufficiently. We are making an appeal to launch an initiative to make vaccination against Covid 19 mandatory for health professionals. In that way, we would protect them and increase the level of protection of patients who have Covid and those who do not, and give an additional impetus to further vaccination of the population," he said.

Selters, he said, is preparing to enter the Covid system by Friday. Other hospitals have facilities ready for opening, when the need arises.

"So much about the possibility of changing anything regarding the measures," said Stevanovic, when asked whether there will be any relaxing of the anti-epidemic measures.

(Telegraf.rs)