BEIRUT (AP) – Death lurks in the corridors of Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut, where several patients were lost to COVID-19 in one day. On Friday, the mood among the staff was even more solemn when a young woman lost the battle with the virus.
There was silence as the woman, barely in her thirties, took her last breath. Then a brief commotion. The nurses tried to revive her wildly. Finally, they quietly remove the oxygen mask and tubes and cover the body with a brown blanket.
The woman, whose name is being withheld for privacy reasons, is one of 57 victims killed on Friday who have so far lost more than 2,150 to the virus in Lebanon, a small country with a population of nearly 6 million that has since years struggled with the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.
In recent weeks, Lebanon has seen a dramatic increase in virus cases following the holiday season when restrictions were eased and a thousand expatriates flew home for a visit.
Now hospitals across the country are almost completely out of beds. Oxygen tanks, fans and most critical medical personnel are very scarce. Doctors and nurses say they are exhausted. Many of their colleagues are away from burnout.
Many others contracted the virus, forcing them to take sick leave and make fewer and fewer colleagues work overtime to bear the burden.
At each bed free after a death, three or four patients wait in the emergency room and wait to take their place.
Mohammed Darwish, a hospital nurse, said he worked six days a week to help with increasing hospitalizations and barely seeing his family.
“It’s tiring. “This is a health sector that is not good at all these days,” Darwish said.
More than 2,300 Lebanese health workers have been infected since February and about 500 of the 14,000 doctors in Lebanon have left the crisis-stricken country in recent months, according to the Order of Physicians. The virus places an additional burden on a public health system that was already on the brink of the country’s currency rise and inflation, as well as the aftermath of the huge explosion in Beirut this past summer. which killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands and devastated entire sectors of the city.
“Our sense is that the country is falling apart,” World Bank Regional Bank Director Saroj Kumar Jha told reporters at a virtual news conference on Friday.
The Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the main coronavirus facility for the government, currently has 40 beds in the ICU – all full. According to the World Health Organization, Beirut hospitals have 98% capacity.
Across the city, in the private American University Medical Center – one of Lebanon’s largest and most prestigious hospitals – space is being cleared to accommodate more patients.
According to Dr. Pierre Boukhalil, head of the Pulmonary and Critical Care division, says this is not enough. His staff were clearly overwhelmed during a recent visit by The Associated Press and jumped from one patient to another amid the constant beeping-beeping of life-monitoring machines.
The situation ‘can only be described as a near disaster or a tsunami in the making’, he said, investigating the AP among the patients. “We have been constantly increasing capacity over the past week or so, and we are not even keeping up with the demands. It does not disappoint. ”
Boukhalil’s hospital sounded the alarm last week, saying in a statement that its health workers were overwhelmed and could not find beds for “even the most critical patients.”
Since the beginning of the holiday season, daily infections have hovered around 5,000 in Lebanon, up from almost 1,000 in November. The daily death toll has hit more than 60 deaths in the past few days.
Doctors believe that the number of cases with increased tests has also increased – a general trend. Lebanon’s vaccination program begins next month.
The World Bank said on Thursday it was approving $ 34 million to help pay for vaccines for Lebanon that would vaccinate more than 2 million people.
Jha, the regional director of the World Bank, said Lebanon would import 1.5 million doses of Pfizer vaccines for 750,000 people that “fully fund us.” He added that the World Bank also intends to fund vaccines other than Pfizer in the Mediterranean country.
Darwish, the nurse, said many COVID-19 patients admitted to Rafik Hariri and especially to the ICU are young, with no underlying conditions or chronic illnesses.
“They catch corona and think everything is fine and then you suddenly find that the patient is deteriorating and it suddenly hits them and dies unhappily,”
On Thursday night, 65-year-old Sabah Miree was admitted to the hospital with breathing problems. She was given oxygen to breathe. Her two sisters also contracted the virus, but their case was mild. Miree, who suffers from a heart problem, had to be admitted to hospital.
“This disease is not a game,” she said, describing how difficult it is to breathe. “I would tell everyone to pay attention and not take it lightly.”
A rural 24-hour curfew set for Jan. 14 was extended Thursday to Feb. 8 to help the health sector deal with the virus surge.
“I still have nightmares when I see a thirty-year-old who has died,” said Dr. Boukhalil said. “The disease could have been prevented.”
“So stick to the conclusion … it bears fruit,” he said.