The Polish government is turning the National Stadium in Warsaw – Poland’s biggest arena – into a field hospital following a rapid rise in coronavirus cases that has left the health system struggling. Similar emergency facilities are to be established in other parts of the country.
The news first emerged last night in separate reports by TVN, a broadcaster, and Wirtualna Polska, a news website, and was confirmed this morning by the head of the prime minister’s office, Michał Dworczyk, who is overseeing work on the project.
“We would like the first 250 beds to be ready to receive patients at the end of this week,” Dworczyk told Radio Zet. The aim will then be to expand to 500 beds, 50 of which will be for intensive care. If necessary, a further 500 beds can be added, said Dworczyk.
“This results from our strategy,” an individual associated with the prime minister’s office told Wirtualna Polska anonymously yesterday. “As soon as hospitals are running out of beds, field hospitals will be launched.”
There have been growing reports of hospitals struggling as coronavirus infections have increased to their highest ever level. Recordings this week revealed patients in ambulances being turned away from hospitals in Warsaw.
Yesterday 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.
The 58,580-seater National Stadium was constructed a decade ago ahead of Poland co-hosting the 2012 European Football Championships and is home to the Polish national football team. It is owned by the Polish state.
Dworczyk clarified this morning that, contrary to reporting yesterday, the field hospital will be located in the stadium’s conference rooms, rather than on the playing surface.
Both TVN and Wirtualna Polska report that the military is involved in construction, with work underway for the last two days. Heavy equipment may appear at the stadium today as preparations move to “full speed”, according to TVN.
Cold storage facilities are to be created next to the stadium to store the bodies of patients who have died. Poland on Friday recorded its highest ever daily coronavirus death figure, 132. Its death rate in relation to the population has recently risen to higher than those in the UK and France.
Dworczyk also confirmed that preparations are underway to create similar temporary hospitals in other parts of Poland, with provincial governors overseeing the process. Sources told TVN and Wirtualna Polska that the government has “warehouses full of equipment” available for use.
However, many hospital directors and doctors have said that the problem is not just equipment, but also a lack of staff, in particular with specialist training to use ventilators.
Dworczyk told Radio Zet today that some staff will be posted from other hospitals in Warsaw, but others will be brought from outside the city. Personnel from the Territorial Defence Force – a branch of the armed forces – and the fire brigade will also be deployed.
Poland came through the first wave of the pandemic with a relatively low number of infections, after implementing one of Europe’s earliest and toughest lockdowns. However, like some other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, it is now suffering an unprecedented spike in cases.
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 this week 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.
TVN’s report on Sunday evening indicates that the government had over the summer put in place contingency plans for emergency field hospitals, including designating their locations.
Officials have recently confessed to being surprised by the current rise in cases. The government “does not have everything under control”, admitted Niedzielski, the health minister, last week, adding that it had “not expected such a large escalation”.
The Chief Sanitary Inspectorate (GIS) predicted in late September that, by mid-October, there would be around 1,000-1,500 new cases a day, and that the figure would then go into decline. In early October, the health ministry forecast 1,500-2,500 cases a day by the middle of the month.
Instead, on Saturday the daily figure passed 9,000 for the first time, reaching 9,622. It has been above 7,500 for each of the last four days and is on what Niedzielski says is an “exponential” upward trend. Those figures come despite Poland having a relatively low testing rate by European standards.
This article has been updated to take account of the government’s confirmation that the hospital is being created.
Main image credit: Arne Müseler/arne-mueseler.com (under CC-BY-SA 3.0 DE)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
