The flu is in vogue in Taiwan, and the emergency room is saturated

In Taiwan, where influenza (flu) is prevalent, the number of emergency patients is increasing, and the shortage of beds is serious.

According to Taiwanese media such as the Yonhap News Agency and the China Times on the 24th, Liz Huang, secretary of the Taiwan Emergency Medical Association, predicted that the shortage of emergency room beds will not improve until this summer, saying, “This year’s flu epidemic is so severe that each hospital’s emergency rooms are overcrowded.”

He stressed that emergency patients may wait in the emergency room for more than three to five days in order to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), adding that emergency room congestion is occurring due to the lack of hospital admission beds and nursing personnel, and that the overall system needs to be improved.

According to Taiwanese authorities, the average number of emergency room visitors per day during the Lunar New Year holiday from the 25th of last month to the 2nd of this month was about 37,000, an increase of 10,000 from the same period last year.

A medical team recently explained on social media that a severe patient arrived in the emergency room of a hospital in southern Kaohsiung, but due to a lack of beds, a “hospital hit and run” was actually made, such as contacting more than 10 other large hospitals.

The patient was then transferred to a hospital about 150 kilometers away, but eventually died of sepsis.

Other emergency medical staff also said that due to a lack of beds, it has become common for acute and severe patients to be transferred from northern Taipei to hospitals in the south central region.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Emergency Medical Association said on the 22nd, “This year’s emergency room congestion is unprecedented,” and feared that emergency medical personnel could resign on a large scale if the problem persists.

JULIE KIM

US ASIA JOURNAL