I am always harping on about hospital occupancy and the reason being is it is there that they are saving the lives of the people who have been hit hard with the virus. Yes, our job is to stop people going to hospital at all by wearing masks, washing our hands, and keeping a social distance. Now what would happen if the person who needs a hospital bed or even worse a bed in the intensive care ward cannot get one. That’s the reason we have a curfew and that is the reason why we are more than likely going to see more restrictions come in as hospital numbers increase.

The number of people in Andalusian hospitals has jumped by over a thousand patients in the last 10 days. I think it is time that I explain the hospital situation here in the Province of Huelva.

There are three main hospitals in Huelva Province: Infanta Elena, Juan Ramon Jimenez and Rio Tinto. In the current situation each of these hospitals have set aside beds specifically for Covid19 patients.

• Juan Ramon Jimenez: has been the nominated hospital for Covid patients and has 80 beds on ward and another 8 in intensive care.
• Infanta Elena Hospital: has 25 beds on ward for Covid patients and another 3 in intensive care.
• Riotinto Hospital: has 12 beds on ward for Covid patients and another 4 in intensive care.

So, the total provision was 117 ward beds for Covid19 and another 15 intensive care beds, making a total capacity for 132 patients. As you know the current patient load on the hospitals in Huelva is 138 with 14 in intensive care. The Andalusian Health service activated the plan 4500 yesterday with 3,198 patients now in hospitals in Andalusia and 422 are in ICU.

Huelva normally has 907 hospital beds available at any one time with another 53 in intensive care. Under the Plan 4500 the number of beds available has increased to 1,013 of which 107 are in intensive care. So they have doubled the intensive care capacity as and from today.

We all know that when a province doubles their ICU capacity overnight, they are taking away resources from other areas to cope with the situation. We need to get the numbers down as soon as we can to give the health care workers the ability to do their magic but also to ensure that non-Covid patients continue to receive the care they need.

We are all in this together and only together can we achieve this goal.