‘Nurses Are Afraid To Work There, Crying’

The situation in the hospital where patients with pneumonia are held.

According to BelaPAN, two coaches of Homel school #4 were diagnosed with pneumonia “with a preliminary positive test for coronavirus”. As Radio Svaboda found out, one of the coaches, a 47-year-old man, is now in the intensive care unit. Before coronavirus was confirmed, he had been treated from pneumonia in the city hospital #1.

It is officially reported that “first-level contacts were hospitalized, and their laboratory examination was organized”. For the second-level contacts, medical supervision was arranged.

As reporters have learnt, 68 people have been listed as the contacts of the first level, 84 - of the second level, contacts of the first level were delivered to the hospital in the Tsyalkouski Street. There used to be an oncology department. Now it has been re-profiled into an infectious diseases unit.

The coach was treated from pneumonia in the City Clinical Hospital #1. There are three buildings, departments of therapy, cardiology, rheumatology, traumatology, pregnancy pathology, and a burn center.

After the coronavirus test of the coach came back positive, he was transferred to the infectious diseases hospital.

“But he contacted our doctors, nurses ... Now there is a mayhem in our hospital. The burn center is working, it is located in a separate building, but other departments are “clogged” with pneumonia. And it did not start now - two weeks ago, for sure. And cardiology was “clogged” with pneumonia patients. We are not given true information, but in the main building and the admissions unit the doctors now wear “space suits”. As I understand it, not all employees at the burn center were allowed to take a day off today, at their own expense,” said one of the hospital’s employees on condition of anonymity.

She says that nurses from the physiotherapy department were sent to the admissions unit for help.

“They were afraid to go there. There was a patient with the coronavirus in the same building. But the superiors ordered this. One nurse sat and cried, too scared to go there, and then went to the admissions unit to help. She said that there was a “total helter-skelter”. How will our nurses go to this “contagious” building? Can they also pick up something and get infected? The doctors who contacted the sick coach are isolated in the main building,” said a hospital employee.

In the evening of April 1, in the hospital # 1, it was announced: “Visits are limited, mask regimen is imposed”. A hospital employee in a protective gear came to meet with the correspondent. She forbade taking pictures and was indignant: “Why did such a fuss be raised in our hospital?” Other employees of hospital #1 also came out and offered to contact the press-center of the executive committee for all the information.

When asked why the staff are wearing protective gear in the admissions unit people, they answered: “Just in case, in order not to get infected, it is not known who comes to the hospital”.

Other staff members unofficially explained that some rooms were indeed redesigned for patients with acute respiratory viral infections and pneumonia.