NHS

Fifteen hours after she was taken out of an ambulance at Queen's Hospital with chest pains and pneumonia, Marian Patten was still in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in a ward. Patten, 78, was luckier than others who arrived at this teeming hospital, east of London: She had not yet been wheeled into a hallway.

Senior doctors in English hospitals are to stage industrial action for only the third time, forcing the cancellation of routine operations for patients, their union have announced. 

Consultant doctors will strike on July 20 and 21 to press the government for better pay - just after a five-day stoppage by more junior doctors.

"After the ransomware attack last week, Government DNS namespace is blocked so the administration switched to offline mode. According to internal investigation, a cyber-attack happened after a malicious software was uploaded from the computer in one of Government services," a government source told BIRN, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Minister of Health, Thanos Plevris spoke about the increase of the covid cases in the country and whether the epidemiological situation is beyond the control of the health authorities.

Answers concerning ICUs, the 4th dose, the adequacy of the vaccines but also for mandatory vaccinations, were given today by the Deputy Minister of Health, Mina Gaga.

"There is no question of lockdown or new measures concerning vaccinated people", all government officials emphasize daily, while the PM's office, the Ministry of Health and the scientists are constantly monitoring the epidemiological data.

The worst-case scenarios for the course of the coronavirus and the loss of human lives are in danger of becoming reality, as the explosion of daily cases from the beginning of November is accompanied by the rapid increase of dead and intubated, with all that entails for the exhausted NHS.

The epidemiological situation leaves no room for misinterpretation. The fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is strong, the Delta variant has penetrated all Greek communities, and its transmission has become very rapid. It takes just one fissure in self-protection measures and a lag in vaccinations to create a new locus of super-spreading.

The situation at public hospitals (the only one that treat COVID-19 patients), with rough shifts of even 36 hours for exhausted hospital doctors and patients being treated on cots in corridors, has raised a series of issues that must be urgently addressed in order to avert a collapse of Greece's National Health System (NHS).

The situation at public hospitals (the only one that treat COVID-19 patients), with rough shifts of even 36 hours for exhausted hospital doctors and patients being treated on cots in corridors, has raised a series of issues that must be urgently addressed in order to avert a collapse of Greece's National Health System (NHS).