Emergency room forced to become ICU in Argentina

Emergency room Doctor Verónica Verdino never imagined that during her residency she would be intubating patients on a daily basis. The 31-year old doctor who is in charge of the ER on weekends at the Llavallol Hospital, a small municipal clinic in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, has seen the emergency room transform, practically, into an intensive care unit during the pandemic's second wave. "We had to learn to intubate different patients," said Dr. Verdino. "Everybody has to be very well coordinated because the lives of the patients are decided in minutes". As Argentina experiences a brutal second wave of COVID-19 with daily death tolls of more than 500 a day, emergency rooms have become the first line of treatment of covid-suspect patients coming in serious conditions. And at the Llavallol Hospital, given that all 13 beds in the intensive care unit for coronavirus patients are almost always occupied, emergency room personnel have to step up to the plate, intubating and keeping patients in their ward who wouldn't have to be there in a normal scenario. Last Saturday night, Claudia Laborde, 56, arrived in an ambulance with her husband Eduardo Ortíz, 71, experiencing shortness of breath and heart pain. Three days earlier Laborde had been released from a different hospital after having COVID-19 but doctors at the ER feared she was still infected because of her symptoms. Quickly her situation deteriorated, doctors from the Intensive Care Unit were consulted and had to be intubated while her husband sat on a stretcher in the corridor. On Monday, she died. In an ER room nearby two men laid intubated and another who had just died was put in a black plastic bag. Concerned by the pressure on the health system and a lack of available hospital beds, the government has extended restrictions to several activities including indoor sports, in-person classes and a nighttime curfew. By Monday, Argentina had reported over 3 million coronavirus cases and more than 64,000 deaths linked to COVID-19. So far 8 million people have received one dose of the vaccine - out of a population of about 45 million - and about a million have completed both doses.

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Emergency room forced to become ICU in Argentina

Emergency room Doctor Verónica Verdino never imagined that during her residency she would be intubating patients on a daily basis.

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