Polish hospitals strained amid “terrifying” surge in Covid cases

Hospitals in Poland are reporting growing difficulties in coping with the rapidly growing number of COVID-19 patients, as the fourth wave of the virus gathers pace in the country.

Over 5,700 new cases were reported today, more than double the figure a week ago and the highest since the spring. While the government has long warned of a fourth wave, the health minister admits that infections are rising faster than expected and that the trend is “terrifying”.

Last autumn, Poland experienced one of the worst waves of the pandemic anywhere in Europe. As the healthcare system struggled to cope, the country recorded the European Union’s highest excess death rate in 2020.

Hospitals are now again raising the alarm. Last weekend, the city of Lublin – which has seen a particularly high number of cases – was already lacking beds for patients with the most severe symptoms. New patients had to be taken to health centres in the furthest parts of the surrounding region, reported Dziennik Wschodni.

Yesterday, 13 hospitals in Lublin Province, which also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Poland, had no free places for Covid patients, according to local broadcaster Radio Lublin.

The hospital with the highest number of available Covid beds – 11 out of 84 – was a temporary facility in the city of Lublin. Only around 150 out of 865 beds are still available in the whole province, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

The governor of the province, Lech Sprawka, pledged this week that more spaces will be created. “We reached decisions about four health centres and before the weekend there will be more decisions about additional spots available,” he said. “And that is probably not the end.”

Other regions are also struggling. All five ventilators at the Provincial Hospital in Tarnobrzeg, in Podkarpackie Province, were already occupied yesterday, while just one of 20 Covid beds was unoccupied. Similar shortages were noted in other cities, including Toruń and Siedlce.

In Warsaw, only 47 out of 393 available Covid beds and seven of 56 ventilators are currently free, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. The Hospital for Infectious Diseases in the capital said that it had accepted twice as many COVID-19 patients as they were prepared for.

The newly opened Southern Hospital in the city, meanwhile, reported that it had been forced to order a special container to store bodies after running out of space.

“Even up to 80% of the COVID-19 patients that require ventilators die,” Artur Krawczyk, the director of the Southern Hospital, told Gazeta Wyborcza, explaining that the centre was built as a regular hospital and was not prepared for such a mortality rate.

“According to the grimmest scenarios we could face over 20,000 new hospitalisations daily,” Poland’s health minister, Adam Niedzielski, said last week, explaining that the culmination is expected to come by the end of the year.

Niedzielski assured that the Polish healthcare system is prepared for that. “That’s why we have temporary hospitals,” he added, saying that they will be opened up again as well as additional Covid beds made available in given locations following the surge in cases.

But yesterday the health minister admitted that the current increase in infections “is exceeding all forecasts” and that “the trend is terrifying”. “More drastic measures will need to be taken,” he added, but without specifying what these might entail.

“Over 90% of the severe cases in our care are patients who haven’t been vaccinated, while those that received the jab suffer from less acute symptoms,” Krzysztof Stolarski, the director of the hospital in Tarnobrzeg told Gazeta.pl. He called upon people yet to be vaccinated to do so without delay.

Sprawka said this week that, when it comes to increasing awareness of the need to vaccinate, it was difficult in his province to reach all residents and to combat “the increasing amount of information creating unnecessary, negative emotions”.

After initially proceeding at a similar pace to the EU average, take-up of vaccinations stalled in Poland from June, despite a number of incentives offered by the government, including a lottery for fully vaccinated people.

Just under 20 million people in Poland are now fully vaccinated, around 52% of the population. That compares to a figure of 65% across the European Union as a whole.

Main image credit: Lukasz Cynalewski / Agencja Gazeta

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna