Hospitals in the Algerian capital, Algiers, are recording a sharp increase in admissions of patients with Covid-19, local health sources announced on Wednesday.
Crossing a fourth wave of the pandemic, Algeria has seen the number of patients rise again in recent days with more than 600 new cases daily. This situation is starting to be felt at the level of hospitals, as officials of health establishments confirmed today to the Algerian press agency (APS-official).
At the Mustapha Bacha University Hospital, located in the center of Algiers, the Covid-19 head of services, Professor Kamel Hayel, affirmed that the number of new patients received daily has doubled in recent days. The service, which received 8 to 9 cases per day last December, now receives a daily average of 17 to 20 cases.
This official said that most of the cases admitted to his care unit are families contaminated by school children, qualifying these cases as “potentially serious, in the sense that these people often resort to self-medication and refuse to medicate. go to hospitals”.
According to the same official, 85 to 90% of hospitalized cases are not vaccinated and only 10% have received the two doses of the vaccine. The same state of affairs at the Issad Hassani University Hospital in Beni Messous, on the heights of Algiers, which records, according to its head of the occupational medicine and medical and paramedical activities department, Prof. Cherifa Idder, a total of 136 patients. The latter also reports on the saturation of the resuscitation service, providing for the development of other services to cope with the pandemic.
According to the same official, the hospital has mobilized nine services for the management of Covid-19 cases, including pediatric departments where 5 cases are hospitalized, gynecology, and cardiology departments. The cases admitted, “although subjected to a long hospitalization do not require oxygen therapy,” she said.
The situation is the same at the level of the Public Hospital (EPH) of Zéralda, west of Algiers, where the officials speak of a bed occupancy rate of 91% (53 beds out of 60) and saturation (100%) of the intensive care unit. Nafissa Hammoud (Ex-Parnet) hospital, east of Algiers, is also experiencing an increase in the number of cases in the Covid-19 medical examination service, from 10 to 15 cases during the month of December last to an average of 48 to 50 cases in the last few days.
The intensive care unit of this health structure is completely saturated, forcing the managers of this hospital to plan for its extension, especially since the cases received require a long stay, varying between 20 and 35 days.
For the day of Wednesday, the Ministry of Health reported 610 new confirmed cases of coronavirus (Covid-19), 367 healings, and 9 recorded deaths. The Algerian authorities are struggling to convince the population of the need to be vaccinated, despite the availability of anti-Covid vaccines.
