ICUs in Syria’s Damascus at 100% capacity amid increasing coronavirus infections

DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – On Tuesday, Director of Readiness, Ambulance, and Emergency Department at the government’s Ministry of Health Dr. Tawfiq Hasaba said that intensive care beds in coronavirus hospitals in Syria’s Damascus are 100% occupied.

This is the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that Syrian authorities have issued such a declaration, although they recently announced an acceleration in the pace of pandemic and called for adherence to preventative measures.

The occupancy rate of the beds in the intensive care departments for coronavirus infected people in the public hospitals in Damascus reached 100%, Hasaba declared in a statement to the Syrian state news agency SANA on Thursday.

“Yesterday (Wednesday), a number of people infected with coronavirus who needed to be kept in the intensive care unit were transferred to other governorates,” he said, stressing that the reason was due to the fact that “coronavirus is significantly increasing in the country.”

On September 16, Hasaba stressed that the numbers of recorded coronavirus infections have increased by five and a half times compared to the first half of August and the first half of September.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Syrian government-held areas have recorded 30,913 infections, including 2,136 deaths.

However, this statistic is not fully accurate, as a member of the Syrian government’s coronavirus advisory committee, Nabough al-Awa, estimated that the number of true coronavirus infections is up to ten times greater than official Ministry of Health statistics.

Most infected people do not visit hospitals and resort to treatment at home, he added.

The United Nations Children’s Fund and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi) are seeking to provide more than one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to cover the needs of three percent of the population of government-controlled areas and those in Syria’s northeast.

On Thursday, a joint report of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization stated, “The first vaccination operations will take place at the end of the first quarter of 2021 or in the second quarter at the latest.”

Additionally, the report stresses the extent of “the fragility of the Syrian health system” and that it suffers from a shortage of staff.