Harald Faber says that due to the number of 60 to 80 years olds in Intensive Care units, elderly people should isolate themselves better
Older people should isolate themselves during the current third wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, says Harald Faber, head of intensive care at the Wilhelmina Hospital Assen (WZA). In a letter sent to the NRC newspaper he writes that healthcare is under pressure and that 80 percent of IC patients are between 60 and 80 years old. “The problem would therefore be solved if this group did not come there,” says Faber. “This message just doesn’t seem to get through”, RTV Drenthe reports.
According to Faber, he and colleagues always ask patients if they can think of a source of their infection: “very often this is due to contacts with children”, he says. “The message can be delivered that these people must isolat until up to three weeks after vaccination,” he argues.
Faber points out that people between 50 and 60 years of age rarely go to intensive care, under people under 50 almost never have to visit the unit.
From tomorrow, care must be ‘scaled up’ to two thousand IC beds for the current third wave of the Coronavirus. “Whether that will work is the question. Many nurses have resigned or do not want to give up vacation anymore. Then it will go to code black”, says Faber in his letter.
