Spanish hospitals are being forced to reckon with agonizing life-or-death decisions about who gets admitted as coronavirus cases overwhelm the country’s health care system, according to a report.
Dr. Daniel Bernabeu, who works at Madrid’s La Paz hospital, said that new guidelines encourage doctors to prioritize giving rooms to younger patients instead of older ones, Bloomberg reported.
“That grandpa, in any other situation, would have had a chance,” Bernabeu told the outlet. “But there’s so many of them, all dying at the same time.”
In addition, the requirements for getting access to intensive care are also getting stricter — with rooms also held for younger patients, whose lungs tend to collapse faster, the outlet reported.
“We are completely overwhelmed,” Bernabeu said.
Disturbing footage has already emerged from Spain’s hospitals of coronavirus patients sprawled out over the floor as they wait for rooms.
Spain has reported more than 56,000 confirmed cases as of Thursday morning, making it the second most infected country in Europe, after Italy.
Doctors at the center of the outbreak in Italy have also described chilling scenes where they are forced to grapple with who gets to receive a life-saving ventilator.
Worldwide, there have been more than 491,000 cases as the death toll climbs to at least 22,000, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
