Paraguay will resort to the Armed Forces to set up hospital beds

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Paraguayan Ministry of Health announced on Friday that it is working with the Ministry of Defense to set up beds in a military center and to use health personnel from the Armed Forces, in view of the total occupation of hospitals due to the cases of coronavirus, which exceeded the daily record of contagions on Friday, March 19th.

The Vice-Minister of Integral Health Care, Hernán Martínez, said that the health portfolio received the offer from the National Defense Council to use some of the military spaces that during the first months of the pandemic were transformed into shelters  for repatriated citizens to comply with the mandatory quarantine.

“According to the number of beds that we are going to provide, we are going to cross-check the data, so that next week we will be able to announce how many beds we are going to be able to provide in that center,” added Martínez.

The need to resort to the health personnel of the Armed Forces responds to the complete occupation of the beds in the hospitals, which also lack supplies and intensive care specialist personnel.

The director of Therapies, Leticia Pintos, advised at the same press conference that since last night there has been a 100% occupation of beds throughout the country.

Pintos assured that “the Ministry of Health is making the greatest possible effort to continue providing beds”, and 92 beds have been added outside the intensive care units.

The doctor insisted that Paraguay is going through a “complex situation”, with 1,645 hospitalized patients and 368 of them in intensive care, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Health.

Increase in the number of infections and deaths

Director of Health Surveillance Guillermo Sequera regretted the increase in cases of coronavirus in the country, with an increase of 40% in the Central department and 70% in Asunción, the centers of the pandemic.

Sequera also spoke of a “very significant increase in the number of deaths” and did not rule out that this week these figures will exceed the total of the previous week.

He also insisted to the citizens that there is no need to wait until their municipality appears in red on the risk map to be extremely careful with the coronavirus.

The country, on red alert, registered last night 2,605 infected persons, the highest number in one day since the first case was detected a year ago.

From March 2020 to date, Paraguay has had 188,493 infections, a total of 3,620 deaths

Awaiting COVAX vaccines

Paraguay expects to receive this afternoon the first batch of AstraZeneca vaccines purchased through the multilateral mechanism Covax of the World Health Organization (WHO), after the controversy and discomfort expressed by the Government for the delay.

The first batch will contain 36,000 doses and another 64,000 doses are expected to arrive before the end of the month, according to Lidia Sosa, Vice-Minister of Health Surveillance.

With these batches, Paraguay would finish vaccinating health personnel and could start with the elderly, according to the country’s vaccination plan.

Sosa specified that, according to the latest data, there are already 12,452 front-line health workers vaccinated, “of which 1,132 are already receiving the second dose of Sputnik V”.

Regarding the Paraguay-China Chamber’s offer to buy 14 million vaccines from the Asian giant, Sosa clarified that they have had no official communication, beyond telephone conversations.

“For us to be able to have the proposal officially, we need to have the documentation and the proposal in writing, with the costs and delivery terms, everything that will help us to take and analyze the situation”, he added.

Source: EFE