Hospital pressure continues to intensify in the province, with an increase in admissions for coronavirus of 214% in a month. UMH researchers say that they expect in two weeks coronavirus infections will have increased by a further by 77.5%
Hospital admissions as a result of covid have increased by 214% in just one month in the province of Alicante and the trend is that in the next two weeks the situation will continue to worsen due to the daily and sustained increase of infections.
Against this background, hospitals are now preparing to move ahead with their plans to adapt their resources and face this new peak of the pandemic, transforming themselves into covid hospitals. These plans include suspending non-urgent operations so as to free up beds and setting up ICU beds in other areas of the hospital, especially in the Anaesthesiology areas. Also, if the deteriorates further, they will refer patients to other health centres with less pressure.
Some hospitals, such as the General Hospital of Elche, Orihuela and Elda hospitals, have already had to resort to these measures, which has seen the suspension of operations, and in the case of Vega Baja, patients are now being referred to other hospitals.
According to forecasts made by researchers at the Operational Research Centre of the Miguel Hernández University through Ciovid.es, the first tool for monitoring the evolution of the coronavirus municipality by municipality, the curve of coronavirus contagions will continue to rise in the next two weeks in the province of Alicante.
According to these predictions, if the trend remains the same as in the last fortnight, coronavirus infections will rise in the province by 77.59%, despite the introduction by the Generalitat of border closures.
“It is not expected that the effects of these measures will begin to be felt until two weeks after their introduction,” explained José Luis Sainz-Pardo, a researcher at the CIO and professor at the UMH.
The researchers are currently focussing their efforts on Dénia, as the town in which infections will increase the most in the next fifteen days. With an incidence of 90 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, infections in the capital of the Marina Alta have risen 81% in the last 2 weeks and an increase of 276% is expected in the next fortnight.
Ibi, Petrer and Bigastro will also have increases of over 200% and in Novelda the cases will increase by 188%. As for the towns that are worse off at the moment, it is not expected that the situation will change. In Elda cases will rise 78% in fifteen days; in Elche they will do so by 44% and in Orihuela by 31.5%.
According to their predictions about the behaviour of the pandemic, the province would be immersed in a third wave. “There was a very clear first wave, which reached its peak and fell to an almost zero value at the beginning of summer, it was as if the virus had disappeared,” said Sainz-Pardo.
The second wave reached its maximum incidence in the province around September 6, before declining again, “although not as abruptly as the first wave”.
In recent weeks, the situation with the pandemic in the province has been much more complicated, “with an increase in cases in the last week that marks an almost vertical line.”
