Campania, non-urgent hospitalizations suspended from 10 January. “Guarantee beds to prevent the collapse of the regional health system”

In Campania the non-urgent hospital admissions will be suspended from Monday. The ordinance number 1/2022 of 7 January provides for this, the same with which the governor Vincenzo De Luca ordered the distance learning until the end of the month for elementary, middle and infant schools (and which the national government has announced its intention to challenge). “In order to allow rapid optimization of the hospital organization to deal with this emergency, having recognized the need to ensure the availability of a more adequate number of beds both in the medical hospital and surgery to be dedicated to patients suffering from Covid-19 “, the text begins,” the suspension, starting from 10 January 2022 and until further express provision, of the scheduled hospitalizations both medical and surgical in public health facilities establishing the possibility of carrying out only urgent hospitalizations that cannot be deferred from the emergency room or for transfer from other hospitals, with the exception of hospitalizations for cancer patients, oncohematology, obstetrics, transplantation, as well as life-saving services and those whose failure to supply may immediately affect the patient’s health and, therefore, does not procra “.

Also foreseen the suspension” of all outpatient specialist activities, in the same structures, which are not characterized by urgency or non-postponement (outpatient activities for the services of oncology, oncohematology, dialysis and radiotherapy and cancer screening activities) “. Finally, “the personnel who are freed from ordinary management must be assigned to the hospitalization and treatment of Covid patients “. In the ordinance, the Campania president justifies the choice of autonomously closing schools (although the law allows it only in the regions in the red zone) with the “circumstances of exceptional and extraordinary need due to the onset of outbreaks or the extremely high risk of spreading the Sars-CoV-2 virus or its variants in the school population “which according to the decree-law of last August 6 allow governors to arrange distance learning. “The need emerges to avert the collapse of the regional health system , strongly under pressure, as proven by the suspension of multiple hospitalization and outpatient activities”, reads the reasons.

“Of concern”, in particular, “the data relating to the occupancy of places bed in intensive care and in the medical area, whose saturation has a probability of more than 50% in both areas in the next thirty days “. The Regional Crisis Unit reported that “in the last two weeks, infections have increased considerably in the 0-44 age range and deaths are also on the rise. The Rt index is equal to 1.61 , with the surveillance indicators that draw for Campania (…) an overall incidence of 1511 cases / 100 thousand inhabitants , and with a projection of more than double, with Rt equal to 2.25 for next week, with the consequent forecast of an enormous increased impact on Covid hospitalizations “. “Each of the Campania ASL”, De Luca still remembers, “has certified that it has received requests for support from the Municipalities and schools in view of the reopening of the schools scheduled for next January 10, but to be in the impossibility of ensuring contact tracing and prescribed screening (…) due to the enormous current pressure on the health organization, engaged in administering swabs to contacts of positive subjects, in the management of quarantines and positive subjects up to to the negativization as well as in the continuation of the vaccination campaign “.

Against the order they presented precautionary appeal to Tar some parents of the students who will not be able to go to school, assisted by the lawyers Giacomo Profeta and Luca Rubinacci. In order to be able to decide on the application, the administrative judges asked the council to produce the documents relating to the circumstances cited among the reasons in the provision by 11 am on Monday: “For the purposes of decision on the precautionary application as well as on the preliminary investigation, the Campania Region must present the relevant and relevant documents in court assumption of the contested ordinance, deducting anything else useful for the purposes of the decision “, writes the Tar. Against the postponement of the return to class, over 23 thousand signatures were collected in a few hours through a mobilization launched by the “No dad” committees. The regional councilor for education Lucia Fortini intervened to defend the choice of the governor: “Today it is unimaginable to go back to school, we need the dad. The measure is precisely to put a stop to the surge , we are not against school, but we make choices knowing the consequences. Other governors were also on De Luca’s wavelength but they did not, the defense of his idea deserves everyone’s respect for De Luca. “