As the number of confirmed coronavirus carriers in Israel quickly on the rise, Israeli health workers are saying that the worst may have yet to come.
"We need to organize ourselves for a scenario of 5,000 [corona patients] on ventilators. That means that all the hospital beds in Israel would be taken up. That's a harsh scenario, but the numbers indicate even more than that," Dr. Vered Ezra, head of the Medical Department at the Health Ministry, wrote to Israel's hospitals on Sunday.
As of Sunday evening, there were close to 4,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Israel, with 66 patients in serious conditions after developing the respiratory illness linked to the virus, COVID-19.
"This is keeping me awake at night. This is a harsh scenario that I hope we can cope with. We will need to empty beds at geriatric hospitals for the sake of dying corona patients. We are preparing to the extent that we can. It looks like we will be able to handle a turn for the worse, but there is a number that all of our preparations will be unable to handle," she wrote.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Ezra underscored that the biggest problem was the number of patients who would need to be ventilated.
"I'm very disturbed by the jump in the number of seriously ill and the number on ventilators. It could create major pressure on the system. From yesterday [Saturday] to today, we saw a jump of 10 in the number of patients downgraded to 'serious' and put on ventilators. That's a large jump. It indicates a trend.
"We won't know how to handle a number that is larger than the number of hospital beds in Israel. We need to do everything to decrease the number of patients," Ezra warned.
On Sunday, Israel saw its 15th fatality from COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who was slated to roll out his national plan to combat coronavirus later Sunday, also addressed the scenario of a mass need for ventilators and said there would be no alternative other than to write a protocol according to which doctors would decide which patients would receive ventilators.
"It's very difficult for me to write this, but it's apparently necessary," Bennett stated.
Also on Sunday, over 200 reservists were called up to assist in hospitals run by the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command.
The reservists were charged with providing logistic and managerial support in 10 hospitals, tasks that include clearing out wards and equipping them for various needs; erecting new wards; transferring medical equipment, and more.
