Just under 60% of Poles believe that the government did not prepare the country properly for the second wave of the coronavirus epidemic, a poll has found. Poland is currently experiencing record numbers of infections, leaving the healthcare system struggling to cope.
The survey, carried out by SW Research for the Rzeczpospolita daily, found that only 19% of the public think the government was well prepared, while 21% said they had no opinion.
🔴TYLKO U NAS. #Sondaż @SWResearch_pl dla rp. pl: 59,9 proc. Polaków uważa, że rząd nie przygotował kraju dobrze na drugą falę #epidemia #koronawirus.a #SARS_CoV_2 #COVID19 https://t.co/7N3iGvnhuw pic.twitter.com/H84o13Pz22
— Rzeczpospolita (@rzeczpospolita) October 18, 2020
The government has itself admitted that it has been surprised by the escalation of the epidemic. Having expected a daily figures of 1,500-2,500 new cases by mid-October, it has actually been confronted by figures above 7,000 for each of the last five days, including a record of 9,622 on Saturday.
In response, the government has imposed new restrictions nationwide, as well as even tougher ones in “red zones” that cover almost half the country. It today confirmed that it was creating a number of emergency hospitals across the country, including one in Warsaw’s National Stadium.
However, a separate poll by United Surveys for RMF FM and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna finds Poles pessimistic about whether such efforts will have any effect. Exactly half of respondents said they believe that the government’s actions do not have a chance of limiting the development of the pandemic, while only 43% believe that they do.
The poll found that political allegiances affected respondents’ faith in the government. Two thirds of voters for the ruling United Right coalition believe that its response could be effective, whereas 63% of voters for the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) and 70% of those of the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) say that it will not.
Recordings of ambulances being turned away from hospitals in Warsaw last week highlighted the difficulties faced by Poland’s increasingly stretched healthcare system amid the rise in coronavirus infections, with the same broadcaster, TVN24, publishing further similar audio clips today.
Doctors around Poland – including directors of many hospitals – have also testified to the difficulties they are facing. A department head at Warsaw’s infectious diseases hospital said that, even though the government’s figures show hundreds of ventilators still unused, in practice “they are all occupied”.
“In the case of intensive care, I’m afraid to say that only when someone dies does a ventilator become available,” Grażyna Cholewińska-Szymańska told Radio Zet. She said that this was not just the case in her hospital, but in all facilities across the country designated for COVID-19 patients.
On Saturday it emerged that one COVID-19 patient – himself an ambulance driver – died after infectious disease hospitals, including in Warsaw, were unable to take him due to a lack of space.
There have also been numerous reports that the state sanitary department, Sanepid, which is responsible for enforcing many of the coronavirus restrictions, is failing to cope with the worsening situation.
Local branches of the department are responsible for tracking and setting quarantine periods for individuals who have had confirmed contact with people who have tested positive for COVID-19. But contacting them by telephone to report contact, which could previously mean a wait of several hours, is now proving almost impossible for many people as infection rates have soared in recent weeks.
“Sanepid already had problems in March and April keeping up with everything” when Poland’s case numbers were very low, diagnostician Dr Matylda Kłudkowska told Wirtualna Polska last week. “Imagine what is happening now, when we have 5,000 infections a day.”
Sanepid employees told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily in late August of impending “chaos” in autumn, as the department had not received the required funding or support to be able to cope better with its new tasks.
“The government spent millions on phantom ventilators,” they complained. “We didn’t get a penny. It’s a scandal.”
The sanitary inspector for Małopolska Province, Jarosław Foremny, has apologised for the difficulties in getting in touch with his department, saying that its workload has been compounded as its staff have also been directly affected by the pandemic, reports Wirtualna Polska.
In June, the government launched an app to assist with coronavirus tracing, at a cost of 2.5 million zloty. But technical problems and limited take-up – of just 2% by September, among the lowest figures in European countries with such apps – has rendered it ineffective.
In one example of Sanepid’s inability to cope with the scale of its current duties, after pupils in a Warsaw school was infected, some families were only informed of their requirement to enter quarantine a day before it was due to end. In the meantime, some had also contracted the virus, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.
Parents of a child in Kraków who had tested positive for COVID-19 told Notes from Poland that they had not received official confirmation from Sanepid about their daughter’s isolation, and only knew about it because the police were regularly visiting to check on her whereabouts.
Another Kraków resident told us that he had received a late-night visit from a police officer who had been given a list of addresses of people who Sanepid claimed to be unable to contact, despite the fact that his own period of isolation had already ended, and that he had received emails and text messages from the department to inform him of this.
Critics of the government have accused it of failing to sufficiently prepare the healthcare system for a second wave. They have also said that it gave society a false sense of security, after the prime minister declared in July – when the ruling party was seeking to boost turnout among the elderly in presidential elections – that Poles “no longer need fear” the virus.
In response, the government has accused opposition parties of playing politics with the epidemic. At a time such as this, “the role of the opposition is to let the government act” and not wage a “political war”, tweeted Jadwiga Emilewicz, an MP from the ruling coalition, on Saturday.
Main image credit: Adam Guz/Kancelaria Premiera
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
