Coronavirus: Hospitals under increasing strain

With hospitals around the island under strain, the state health services organisation Okypy has appealed to the private sector to come forward.

“Things are difficult in hospitals,” Okypy spokesman Charalambous Charilaou told the CyBC on Sunday.

Instructions have been given to create more beds for Covid patients in Larnaca, Nicosia and Paphos, he said.

The move comes as the number of hospitalisations hit a record high on Saturday night, with a total of 180 patients in hospital, 54 of them in a serious condition.

Okypy is now waiting for a response from the private sector, whose pneumologists and pathologists it has appealed to to help treat the increasing number of patients.

On Saturday a member of the epidemiological team said further decisions on restrictive measures would depend on the number of patients with coronavirus in hospitals and especially intensive care units.

Assistant professor of paediatrics and Infectious diseases at the University of Cyprus Medical School and Archbishop Makarios hospital, Maria Koliou told the Cyprus News Agency that it is the numbers of patients in hospitals that will define whether stricter measures will be taken or not.

“All the (healthcare) systems, even the most well-equipped and well-staffed ones, if they are overcrowded at some point find it difficult to cope,” the health ministry advisor told CNA.

Tougher measures against coronavirus are expected to be issued in the coming week as those in place at the moment run out on January 10.

Current measures include a ban on house visits, a curfew between 9pm to 5am, the closing of food and entertainment establishments, shopping malls and churches.

The government team of epidemiologists will meet on Tuesday before any measures are decided by the Council of Ministers, which meets on Thursday.

On Saturday two more deaths and 627 new cases were announced.