Filenews 3 January 2025 - by Marilena Panayi
The entire health system is on alert.
In public hospitals, patients with seasonal infections are treated in wards other than pathology and pulmonology due to overcrowding, while the SHSO is constantly making special arrangements in order to ensure a greater number of beds.
The Ministry of Health, which, based on the agreement reached before Christmas with the private sector, has intervened on several occasions and already dozens of patients have been transferred from public to private hospitals for treatment. The Accident and Emergency Departments are under constant pressure due to the increased attendance of patients and, as we are informed at the Nicosia Emergency Department, patients with severe symptoms of seasonal infections are waiting for admission to wards.
From December 23 until last night, the general director of the Ministry of Health, Christina Giannaki, told Filenews, "dozens of patients have been transferred to private hospitals, mainly in Nicosia and Limassol, and our effort is continuous and uninterrupted." In Nicosia alone, Giannaki said, "54 patients have been transferred to private hospitals."
The Ministry of Health, he added, is constantly on alert and it seems that the mechanism that has been set up is working very well so far."
Very high occupancy, SHSO spokesman Charalambos Charilaou told Filenews, "we have in the paediatric departments, pathology and pulmonology departments and there are patients in the diaspora. That is, they are hospitalized in rooms of wards of other specialties since there are no free pathological beds."
"We all understand that a patient with an infection cannot be treated in a room where there are patients with other health problems. This means that if, for example, we transfer a patient with an infection to a room in the operating room and the room is double, the second bed can then be filled by another patient who will come to the hospital with the same infection.
To do this, special arrangements are constantly needed, which we are making."
An increased number of cases, Mr. Charilaou said, "concerns the respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, which, although based on what we see every year should begin to subside during this period, we observe that it continues to show activity that mainly affects young children and the elderly. This is when flu activity has begun, plus all other seasonal infections, pneumonia in particular, etc."
The outbreak "at this time we cannot say that it was not expected and there will certainly be a continuation because always within January our cases begin to increase significantly."
