Omicron is also dominant in Italy in intensive care, especially full of unvaccinated Covid patients, so the variant is not a common cold. “A series of studies that we are carrying out tell us that Omicron makes no difference on the unvaccinated, it is no less dangerous than Delta: 2/3 of almost 4/5 of Covid patients in intensive care are Omicron, they are unvaccinated and fragile patients. For them, the latter variant is anything but a cold. ” Antonino Giarratano, president of Siaarti, the Italian society of anesthesia, analgesia, resuscitation and intensive care, underlines this to time.news Salute, which is collaborating with the Higher Institute of Health to evaluate the incidence of variants within intensive care.
“Being much more transmissible, Omicron has determined a widespread contagion even among children and adolescents, among which the percentage of serious cases is very low, only 5% have significant symptoms. But on the unvaccinated it is not so – he remarks – we have a comparable situation to previous waves. In our ICU network, seeing patients in serious condition, we do not register any differences between Omicron and the other variants. The numbers are certainly far from those of the previous waves, but if the surrounding world has started to live again without problems, as if Covid were no longer there, the fight continues in hospitals and intensive care units. We continue to see the tail of the last peak of cases and still count many deaths, mortality among the unvaccinated in intensive care remains very high ” , adds Giarratano.
For the intensive care practitioner, “within 30-40 days we may be out of this latest wave, but it will take longer to see the effects on ICU employment.”
“We have been called heroes, but the no to refreshments for the families of doctors who died of Covid and what is happening with the PNRR funds are clear signs of gratitude only in words. They are bad signs that we will soon no longer be considered. “, Giarratano says with a touch of bitterness, finally commenting on the rejection, in the Senate, of the sub-amendment which provided for refreshments for the families of doctors who lost their lives during the pandemic. The doctor also raises the question of the PNRR in health care. “It is traveling, depending on the Regions, with 20 different ways of spending to improve territorial medicine, technological equipment, training. There is no uniformity or controls, but above all there are Regions that are using the funds of the NRP only on political base, without involving health workers and scientific societies, but not even technicians. Thus we risk burning this unprecedented amount of resources and widening the gap between regions, and finding ourselves at the next pandemic with an inadequate health system because we doctors do not have a role in the choices of the NRP. And it will always be the same professionals who pay “.