During this COVID-19 Pandemic, health services, especially hospitals, have been under constant pressure, highly compromising the installed hospitalization capacity of the availability of intensive care beds, said Mario Ruiz, medical manager of the Costa Rican Social Security (CCSS).
From mid-November to date, a high occupancy has been observed, reaching at a time when the institution was at the top of critical ICU beds, in which the institution has the latest resources to save the lives of people in serious condition. of imminent death.
As part of the situation analysis sessions carried out by the Fund, it has been identified that, it takes place on average:
15 days from the moment of contagion of a person until requiring hospitalization
18 days stay in intensive care units
10 days admission to general hospitalization
Therefore, the intensity of the demand for hospital services will be consistent with the intensity of the infections that occur. This occupancy dynamic generates fluctuations in hospital occupancy which can occur in a matter of hours in the course of the same day. This month, an average daily admission of 22 people to intensive care units has been registered.
Data from the CCSS as of December 26th state that there were 33 free critical ICU beds; however, eight of these were blocked. And yesterday there were 22 free critical ICU beds and five unavailable.
The maximum goal of 359 intensive care beds. It currently has 341 licensed, of which 5 are pediatric critical care and 109 are adult critical care. At noon on Monday, there were 82 adult critical ICU beds occupied, which means an occupancy of 80%. The remaining are 227 severe ICU beds, which represent an occupancy of 63% (147 occupied beds).
