Belgian military personnel have been deployed to a new emergency hospital unit to “help relieve congestion in all hospitals in the Liège region,” the country’s military announced Wednesday.
The emergency unit of 17 personnel has been created in a disused surgical wing, which had been closed due to the pandemic, of Liège’s Centre Hospitalier du Bois de l’Abbaye.
The unit “will be able to accommodate 26 patients in [an] intermediate term,” with the aim of being able to accommodate 30 patients in the long term, according to the Belgian military, La Défense.
“The 26 patients the military personnel will be looking after are recovering with a stable state of health, not requiring intensive care,” hospital spokesperson Nicolas Petterle told CNN.
Additionally, La Défense is deploying two doctors, five nurses and seven paramedics as Covid-19 cases surge across Belgium.
Belgium reported a record number of hospitalizations on Wednesday, with 877 Covid-19 patients admitted in the last 24 hours, according to the Belgian health authority. At the previous height of the pandemic in March, daily hospitalizations peaked at 629.
The number of people currently in hospital across Belgium has reached 7,485, with 1,351 patients requiring intensive care, according to health authorities. On average in the last two weeks, 619 people have been admitted to hospital each day.
The number of new cases has been consistently dropping since October’s record high of 22,132 daily infections. On average in the last week, Belgium reported 14,610 new cases each day — that’s down from 16,098 average daily new cases the previous week.
