Czech Hospitals Are at Brink of Capacity Due to a Lack of Personnel

Hospital bed capacity “is close to its absolute limits, primarily due to a lack of personnel”, said Deputy Health Minister and hospital bed coordinator Vladimír Černý at a press conference on Tuesday.

The lack of qualified personnel means that the ministry is not considering activating a field hospital in Brno, Mr. Černý said. Dozens of new intensive care beds are being set up in Prague at the moment, according to the deputy health minister.

The field hospital

The Czech army erected a field hospital in the northern Prague district of Letňany in October and put the facility on standby, equipped to care for as many as 500 COVID-19 patients.

But because of the lack of available staff, the field hospital has been packed up at the end of January.

The hospital was designed to treat less acute COVID cases so other hospitals can focus on treating the most severely ill.

The main section of the hospital had ten separate sections, each with 50 beds. They also had laboratories, X-ray capacity, and CAT scanners, as well as decontamination units for the medical staff.

Latest statistics

The health ministry recorded 11,233 new COVID-19 infections on Monday, up from 8,901 cases a week earlier.

The official death toll from COVID-19 has reached 19,537, a rise of 207 from a day earlier which includes deaths from Monday and revisions to previous days, according to ministry data.

In total, 1.168 million infections have been recorded since March 2020. Current hospitalizations stand at 6,573, more than double the government’s target level.

The ministry reported 561,078 vaccine shots have been administered.