Health Fordy, Corona | There are no intensive care patients this year. But there is one problem that remains post-pandemic

– The latest coronavirus-related admissions we had at Førde Central Hospital were during the transition from late Christmas to New Year’s, says Helse Førde’s Head of Communications, Terje Ulvedal, after checking for the last seriously ill patients in the hospital.

When the community reopened in February 2022, life was very much as one only long ago dreamed it could be early in the pandemic: one should be able to live as normal, despite the fact that there is still quite a bit of corona. big. Even in the ever-changing new releases, new releases hit a lot more than before.

Recently, there was a recommendation from the FHI that those over the age of 75 should take a new booster dose of the Corona vaccine. For those in this group, this is the fifth dose. Residents of nursing homes in the municipality of Sonfjord have also been vaccinated, Oystein Fornes recently reported.

Delay is the only consequence

Helse Førde’s department director, Asle Kjørlaug, says corona treatment is now seen as part of normal operations in Helse Førde. It is being performed in a hospital that is functioning now as it did before the pandemic.

Corona is no longer treated in a special way, and is on par with other infectious diseases, according to him.

Essentially, says the specialist director, it is only in one area that one can notice the pandemic still affecting hospital operations:

– The consequences of the epidemic at the present time are long waiting times for treatment, most of which came during the pandemic. It wasn’t the virus and disease itself that led to this, but rather the waiting lists and deadline violations that came as a result of the procedures that were in place during the pandemic, says Kurlog.

Operations have been cancelled, as have medical conditions examined.

“Getting rid of this now is the biggest challenge we’ve faced since the pandemic,” he says.

normalization hospital

Kjørlaug says the really big breaking point for Helse Førde came when the virus mutated from a delta variant, to the variant called Omikron. Because while the level of infection has been higher than ever during the pandemic, the level of severity has decreased in terms of how sick patients are.

As the municipal doctor Oystein Furness pointed out when he recently spoke of encouraging the fifth dose of the vaccine, it is no coincidence that this particular age group is the only one being vaccinated. This is where the death rate is highest.

– The deaths that you see now you see in municipalities, not in hospitals, says the relevant director, Kurlog.

Kjørlaug says that, like society elsewhere, the hospital has also returned to normal – aside from the treatment backlog.

– When Omikron took over, there was a huge difference in the hospital. If we had the same wave of infection with the delta version, it would probably be more difficult, he says.