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ARCHIVED - Alicante closes 300 hospital beds as Covid infections continue to fall
Coronavirus patients now occupy 64 of the 3,500 beds in the 10 largest public hospitals in Alicante province
Fears of an upsurge in Covid-related hospital admissions at the beginning of August which led to a re-organisation of beds has abated with the continued decline in new infections which have slumped by a third in a week.
The Regional Ministry of Health had initially decided to keep beds open rather than the usual closure every summer, in order to cope with the pandemic. But the significant drop in incidence in the last week, which experts predict will continue, has led the health authorities to order the closure of up to 300 beds between the main hospitals in the province as part of a fortnightly review.
This equates to 9% of the approximate 3,500 hospital beds available in the province's 10 hospitals with the largest capacity.
The move is supported by data that shows the current occupation of hospital beds due to Covid is below 2%, and a third of the available beds are free, with 64% occupied by patients with other pathologies.
The 2% represents just 65 beds occupied by Covid patients, and of these less than 20 are in critical care units (ICU).
The current number of beds occupied by Covid patients is similar to the levels in March 2021. At the end of January of this year, the figure had risen to 15%.
According to the health authorities, hospitals have "returned to the pre-pandemic normality of the summer months", and "exceptional measures put in place due to the pandemic" are coming to an end.
The 14-day cumulative incidence has now fallen to 289 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, and in the first fortnight in August, the number of people admitted to hospital in the Valencia region has fallen from 846 to 589.
Image: Archive
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