Nagasaki Prefecture is requesting hospitals in the prefecture to expand the beds dedicated to corona patients, and as of 22nd of this month, 41 medical institutions in the prefecture have secured a total of 462 beds.
On the other hand, in the medical field, there is a growing movement to limit general medical care in order to increase the number of beds dedicated to corona patients.
Of these, Saiseikai Nagasaki Hospital in Nagasaki City, which has been designated as a "new coronavirus infectious disease priority medical institution" that can accept corona patients with relatively severe symptoms, is dedicated to corona patients in the middle of this month at the request of the prefecture. We have decided to increase the number of beds from 5 to 21 which is more than four times as many.
On the other hand, in order to increase the number of beds dedicated to corona patients, 20 beds for general medical care on the same floor can no longer be used to prevent the spread of infection.
And inpatients other than Corona patients who were on the floor were forced to take measures such as transfer.
In addition, in order to minimize the entry and exit of staff on the dedicated floor, the work such as washing sheets and dumping garbage will be carried out by nurses who are in charge of medical treatment, and the amount of work is increasing compared to general medical treatment.
For this reason, the amount of work that one person is responsible for is approaching its limit, and it is difficult to increase the number of beds any further under the current system.
Saisei Chairman Masao Eto, director of Saki Hospital, said, "Even if there are many mildly ill people, if there are many infected people, naturally some patients will need to be hospitalized. There are wrinkles, such as patients postponing hospitalization and emergency patients not being accepted. "