On the fifth day of Israel’s tight lockdown, the soaring infection rate continues as the Health Ministry confirmed a record-high number of 9,589 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday morning, with tests showing a 7.6% positivity rate.
Israel has become the 29th country to confirm half a million confirmed virus cases, with the total number of cases reaching 504,269 on Tuesday. There are currently 1,027 seriously ill patients, of whom 247 are ventilated. Nineteen additional fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 3,704.
Hospital wards are overflowing, with an unprecedented number of 1,759 hospitalized virus patients, compared to only 898 seriously ill patients during the second wave.
Israel’s hospitals are staggering under the weight of virus patients – medical staffers are overworked, wards are overfilled and there is a shortage of medical staff due to those who tested positive for the virus or in quarantine.
“The situation is difficult,” said Prof. Zvi Friedlander, the head of internal medicine at Hadassah Medical Center, Ynet reported.
“It is toughest on the medical interns,” he said. “People with families and children who are forced to work so hard and are so often unable to help their patients. It is a heavy burden.”
“We are opening more and more coronavirus wards. Over the weekend, my ward was turned into one. The number of hospitalizations is approaching the peak of the second wave and now stands at more than 130. During the last wave, we reached 150 but now that number just keeps rising. Many of the patients are in serious condition and unfortunately, some of them die too.”
Dr. Bibiana Hazan, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at Emek Medical Center in Afula, said that the high infection rate in the area is not only increasing the number of hospitalized virus patients but is also contributing to a serious staff shortage – just when they are needed the most.
“We are in an infection hotspot and many of our staff live here,” she said. “We are experiencing serious morbidity among staff not only within the hospital but outside it as well. We are short many workers because they are either in quarantine or have actually tested positive for coronavirus. We have 180 staff members in quarantine, which is insane. Six to seven percent of our staff are in isolation and it keeps growing every day.”
Hazan said that the hospital has made a request of the Health Ministry to transfer patients to other hospitals in central Israel. “The periphery is always far more understaffed than the center, and now the load is enormous.”
However, according to Prof. Alon Grossman, head of the underground coronavirus ward at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikva, near Tel Aviv, the situation is also difficult in the center.
“Rabin Medical Center has the most coronavirus patients outside of Jerusalem,” he said. “We received over 100 patients in the past week and many of them succumbed to the virus.”
“During the second wave, we were the dedicated virus ward and throughout it all, we never even came close to the number we are seeing now.”
In Jerusalem, Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center, the hospital treating the most coronavirus patients in the capital, was forced to turn away non-coronavirus patients on Monday due to the overload, directing ambulances to other Jerusalem hospitals.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
Not understood – can someone explain:
If Israel is on lockdown – why then is the situation getting WORSE?
In the US states are NOT on lockdown – and the situation is reaching a plateau
Perhaps a lockdown is not the answer
Strange!
Obviously the cases are higher. Isreal made a lock down but arent enforcing the rules so no one listens
Why is the lockdown not working? Consider the following.
I am in a frum neighborhood in Yerushalayim. Most people are not listening to any rules at this point. They are not even trying to wear masks or social distance in any way. All the kids are out of school and they are all playing together along with their mothers with no masks in sight, groups of families are getting together for Shabbos meals, etc., etc. When a class closes because a child had Corona, people do not keep their children in quarantine – they merely keep them home from school, but send them out and about to play with friends, shop in the supermarket or takeout places, and hang out in the building hallways. The authorities seem to be completely unaware of this. And each time they say “numbers are going down” – well, when the numbers get high, people stop going to get tested because they don’t want to be bothered by having to go into quarantine, and they don’t want their neighborhood to become a red zone because then their kids won’t have school.
The lockdown is a tragedy for small businesses and is not doing much because so many people are completely ignoring it and spreading illness as they go. What a waste 🙁