Tens of thousands of planned surgeries and consultations have been postponed since the coronavirus struck Norway. Now the Medical Association fears there would be unmanageable queues in the health service.
“In a situation where we assume that there is a need to continue strong measures, there must now be a stronger focus on how the health service can cope with the pandemic while also ensuring other patient care,“ said the Norwegian Medical Association in a letter to the Directorate of Health.
The letter was reproduced in the Dagbladet.
Occupancy at Oslo University Hospital was nearly 53 per cent in the last week of March. Just in week 12, the country’s largest hospital postponed 600 surgeries and 9,000 consultations. The numbers were published in an overview by NRK last week.
Across the country, scheduled treatments are on hold to provide enough capacity to handle the coronavirus crisis.
But now the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients is steadily declining. On Monday, Health Minister Bent Høie (H) announced that hospitals must plan to be able to return to normal operations again.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
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