Although a majority of hospitals across the country have remained silent on the quality of treatment provided to coronavirus patients, the number of severe warnings from senior physicians at government-owned hospitals on the matter is on the rise.

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According to senior physicians, the standard of care has deteriorated to such an extent that in some hospitals, doctors are unable to adequately care for coronavirus patients. With 700 Israelis hospitalized in serious condition, 221 of whom are in critical condition and 158 of whom are on ventilators, State Comptroller Matanyahu Engman's warned this week that Israel lacked sufficient experienced medical and nursing staff to care for patients in intensive care and on ventilators and said Israel suffers from a serious shortage of intensive care unit beds.

A department head at one of Israel's largest government-owned hospitals told Israel Hayom Wednesday that "there are inexperienced nurses and doctors who don't know how to treat seriously ill patients, and some of them don't have any idea what to do with patients at night. They said that "patients are paying for this with their lives and doctors are extremely worn out. Some of the staff cannot handle [patients in] serious condition and don't know how to handle patients on ventilators. This both puts patients in mortal danger and [leaves] the doctors coming out of [these] shifts broken and completely devastated."

According to the director, "This week, a doctor told me he froze while on a shift when he saw how the team of doctors and nurses didn't know how to treat patients. There are doctors who are in a state of post-trauma because they dealt with the deaths of many patients that night. One night, nearly 10 patients died, and that stays with them like the trauma from a bloody war.

"When hospital management stations doctors and nurses who don't know how to care for seriously ill patients [in intensive care wards]," the results are "catastrophic," the director said. "All this is happening, and the public knows absolutely nothing about it, and hospital directors are making it seem as if it's business as usual and everything is OK."

According to Dr. Amir Neuberger, the director of the Rambam Health Care Campus' coronavirus ward, due to a lack of hospital beds, staff sometimes rush to send patients home. He said the situation was comparable to a "mini mass attack."

"For the time being, treatment is reasonable [at our hospital], and there is enough trained staff, but there are now hospitals where there is one doctor in charge of seriously ill patients and those on ventilators, and then obviously this ratio is unreasonable and patients suffer."

Professor Yehuda Adler, an expert in cardiology, internal medicine, and medical administration, and a coronavirus adviser to municipal authorities said: "When there are 700 seriously ill patients hospitalized, the medical staff is entirely worn out and in some hospitals, they are forced, particularly at night, to assign inexperienced interns to treat seriously ill patients and that puts the patients' lives at even greater risk and creates a serious therapeutic problem."

On Wednesday, Wolfson Medical Center's internal auditor Assaf Gantz warned hospital director Anat Engel the hospital was on the verge of overcapacity.

"Today, during the fourth coronavirus wave, the number of people hospitalized in coronavirus wards is very high, and at one point, the number of coronavirus patients at the hospital reached as many as 80 patients or more, Under these circumstances, criteria should be determined for a situation of overcapacity, which will allow for proper preparation and coping."

Failure to act

Over the last year, physicians at Wolfson Medical Center reported a series of ongoing failures to senior management on the treatment of coronavirus patients, including incidents in which patients died as a result of receiving inadequate treatment and neglect. They noted patients on ventilators had died not just due to the virus but due to a lack of basic medical equipment and ongoing failures by nurses who lacked the necessary experience to treat seriously ill patients.

According to senior physicians, things will only get worse as more people are hospitalized.

On Wednesday, officials at Jerusalem's Shaarey Zedek and Hadassah Medical Centers announced that "unfortunately, due to the deep budget crisis, we are being forced to divert patients to other hospitals."

In response, Wolfson Medical Center issued a statement "unequivocally" saying: "We have not reached the point of overcapacity, and we are far from it. Any professional involved in the matter can testify to that. From the first day of the pandemic, [hospital] staff have provided the most excellent and advanced medical care, including ECMO treatment, and patients are transferred to us from other hospitals for treatment. In addition to standing at the forefront of the war for coronavirus patients' lives, we are continuing our routine activities of diagnosis, surgeries, and saving lives."

In a statement, the Health Ministry said: "The ministry and the Directorate of Government Medical Centers are following the occupancy of government medical centers up close throughout the coronavirus crisis. We are not under the impression the Wolfson Medical Center is at a point of overcapacity, and it is continuing to provide quality and dedicated medical treatment to its patients."

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Approximately 3,000 of the newly-confirmed cases live in cities, towns, or local authorities coded either red or orange under the traffic light plan.

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An additional two coronavirus patients died of the virus after midnight Monday, bringing the national death toll to 1,141 since the start of the epidemic in Israel.

The number of hospitalized patients listed in serious condition has jumped to 533, 140 of whom were on ventilators as of Tuesday morning.

There were 40,689 active or symptomatic patients in Israel.

The COVID units at the Galilee Medical Center; Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Hadassah Mount Scopus, Assuta Ashdod, and Hillel Yaffe were at or over full capacity.

Health Ministry Deputy Director-General Professor Itamar Grotto addressed the shrinking number of available hospital beds at a press conference on Monday evening. According to Grotto, the Health Ministry was assessing the situation and there was currently no order in place to cut back on activity, even though over-burdened hospitals in northern Israel and Jerusalem were starting to send patients to other hospitals in central Israel.

"We are dealing with a new disease with new complications and seeing more than a few young patients reach serious condition. The disease is spreading throughout the entire country, and if we don't stop it, we will cause harm to more people. The longer we wait, the worse the situation will get," Grotto said.

Touching on the nationwide lockdown slated to take effect on Friday, Grotto said, "The upcoming lockdown is planned for three weeks, with the instructions being not to go further than 500 meters [yards] from home, except for special reasons such as work, to receive medical care, to shop for food, or to hand children over between divorced parents."

Meanwhile, a new study that has yet to under the peer review process, appears to confirm concerns that coronavirus can, in some cases, attack the brain and cause confusion and delirium.

Thus far, some patients who recovered from coronavirus have reported depression or other lasting effects, but the new study indicates for the first time that they might be directly linked to coronavirus.

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