translated from Spanish: Patients in ICUs break records and a worst-case scenario is expected

After a weekend in which the country touched the peak numbers of infections in the pandemic, now the high numbers have moved to the intensive care units (ICUs), which yesterday exceeded all levels of occupancy seen during the pandemic.
“We are at an all-time record for critical bed occupancy. Today (yesterday) 4,303 occupied beds are reported, the highest number of ICU occupancy in the history of the country,” Dr. Luis Castillo, national coordinator of critical beds at the Ministry of Health, said on Radio Concierto.
The places in use yesterday represented 97% of occupation at the country level, with some regions where the situation was more serious. In Aysén, for example, they ran out of free beds, and in the Metropolitan there were only 35 places for serious patients, with more than 18 thousand capitals still with the active virus. Castillo said the capital is the region that “is pushing the rise in the use of critical beds” in the country, with 10 days of increases in covid and non-COVID hospitalizations.
Given the pressure, the health care network is preparing for a greater impact due to the recent infections that may worsen in the coming days, with a scenario in which yesterday 5,040 cases were reported with 43,239 active infections in the country.
For next week Castillo estimates that nearly 4,600 critical beds will have to be made available, a figure that, if realized, will surpass the record number of places reached in the pandemic, which was recorded on May 7.
The projections, he added, are made with a drop in infections and an increase in vaccination in mind, a campaign that yesterday reached 70% of the target population inoculated with at least one dose. If the pandemic worsens, surpassing the record of 9 thousand infections, the doctor warned that “it would be difficult” to open more beds. “It’s very difficult to keep growing. If that happens we enter into a catastrophic plan and scenario, like war,” he said.

Original source in Spanish