Advises the total closure of the country for a week

They warn that the health system collapsed due to the wave of infections by the new coronavirus and that if measures are not adopted between July and August, it will be disastrous.

Santo Domingo, DR

The president of the Dominican Society of Pneumology defines what has been happening in the country for the past month as appalling, given the high number of people infected with Covid-19; the aggressiveness and speed with which it is evolving; the lack of beds to hospitalize patients; the shortage of oxygen and the emotional impact on doctors.

Dr. Evangelina Soler, president of the guild, was emphatic in calling on the Government to urgently arrange the country’s total closure and all activities nationwide for a week 24/7 and then established strict curfews, where people leave work for home, with a free transit of one hour.

She also suggested opening large tents and spaces to attend patients requiring hospitalization. She asked the population to lock themselves in, not go to squares or public places, and not neglect the use of masks and hand-washing, given the aggressiveness of the new variants.

Otherwise, in the opinion of the president of the specialized entity, the months of July and August will surpass the catastrophic situation that is being experienced now and will become disastrous, pointing out that the consequences of the social movement of this Mother’s Day weekend will be seen in those months, as it has happened since the beginning of the pandemic.

Soler made the statement last night while participating as a guest on the “Cita con el Covid” that Listindiario.com broadcasts every Monday, under its director Miguel Franjul and journalist Doris Pantaleón.

Soler recalled that each infected person passes the virus to between two to five other people and that if these measures are not taken now, “we will regret it as a society. It is a call to the businessmen to support the country and to the President to take the correct and necessary measures to stop the transmission at this time,” she added.

System collapsed
The president of the Dominican Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery said that the system collapsed, not only in Greater Santo Domingo but also in cities like Santiago, Baní, San Cristóbal, San Pedro de Macorís, La Romana, among other provinces, from where she receives daily calls from desperate pneumologists looking for beds to admit patients.

She understands that it is the moment to open large spaces, choose a hotel to turn it into a hospital and set up large tents to attend to people who need oxygenation but are not necessarily connected to ventilators or intensive care.

She said that Baní is overflowing and that a doctor there explained to her that not even a chair could be found in the emergency rooms of the centers to place oxygen to the patient.

Oxygen shortage
Soler said that the most worrying thing is a shortage of oxygen, especially on weekends, because the private centers are not supplying oxygen on Sundays. She said that when a patient lacks oxygen, he becomes desperate and gets worse.

Very aggressive in young people
She considered that the reality of the country in the face of Covid-19 is very worrying because of the increase in cases and because they are more severe than ever, which she attributes to the circulation of new variants, announced this weekend by the Ministry of Public Health, including those from Brazil and the United Kingdom, which are very aggressive.

“From the behavior of the virus we know that these variants are more than a month old, because the pneumologists who have been working with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic have been seeing a different behavior in patients since that time,” she said.

She explained that before, after seven days of symptoms, a patient evolved to the inflammatory process. Still, now it is seen much faster, with resistance to the treatment and protocol and generalized damage to the lungs.

She explained that this is seen in people who do not have any risk factor, who do not have hypertension or diabetes, among them healthy young people, which forces them to be hospitalized.

Soler urged the population to “pick themselves up,” If someone presents any of the symptoms, go to the doctor immediately.

FIGURES
Between 20 and 40.
Soler informed that the demand is such that the average number of patients with the virus that a pulmonologist sees in their office is between 20 and 40 every day. In the private practice between 25 and 30 and hospitals, it goes up to 40 patients. She specified that internists and infectious disease specialists also experience this reality.

Before the outbreak.
Before the outbreak, pneumology specialists received between 10 and 15 patients daily.

Specialists.
The doctor informed that the guild made an internal study to evaluate the impact of the pandemic among pneumologists, and the results have been shocking, which will soon be submitted to the authorities to see if they will be given at least one day off per week.