European health experts fearing Covid-19 second wave want to train medic 'army'

The calls were made as medical experts around the world try to learn lessons from the first wave of the novel coronavirus
European medical experts told Reuters they need an 'army' of staff ahead of a potential second wave to sweep the continent
POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Europe’s intensive care experts are calling for an “army” of medics to help battle a potential second wave of the novel coronavirus, according to reports.

At the peak of the European Covid-19 outbreak between February and April this year, many frontline key workers were off sick or self-isolating due to suspected infection with the virus.

Student nurses, student doctors and retired medics all had to be drafted in by health services to help boost staff shortages in hospitals across the continent.

Medical leaders across the continent are now calling for plans to ensure hospitals are more prepared if a second wave of infections spins out in the coming months.

Medics want plans in place to avoid staff shortages
AFP via Getty Images

Ideas revealed to Reuters news agency include hiring increased numbers of permanent staff for intensive care units (ICUs), retraining staff to specialise in treating Covid-19 patients, and allowing medics to be more flexible and “mobile” to enable experts to travel to help with localised outbreaks.

Maurizio Cecconi is president-elect of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), which brings together ICU medics from around the world.

Mr Cecconi, who heads up the intensive care department at the Humanitas hospital in Milan, told Reuters: “We need a healthcare army.

"If there is another big wave, we should be prepared to deploy doctors and nurses from nearby regions within Italy. This did not happen a lot in the first wave.”

The UK saw Nightingale hospitals built around major centres , which went largely unused as the NHS coped with the outbreak.

But other European countries still face both bed and ICU staffing shortages. Italy may need to boost its numbers of anaesthetists, resuscitation experts and other medics by 50 per cent going forward, according to the Italian society of intensive care SIAARTI.

Jozef Kesecioglu, president of ESICM and head of intensive care at the University Medical Center of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, said he plans to call back surgeons, cardiologists, internal medicine physicians and nurses for additional training on how to treat Covid-19 patients.

He said: "We should not wait until the new wave comes, we should give them regular training."

At the height of the pandemic, the European Commission funded cross-border transfers of medical staff, which saw teams of "flying doctors" travel from Norway and Romania to Italy. Patients were also transferred to different regions, but the experiment has so far failed to gather much support.

This week fears of a second wave in Europe increased as the Covid-19 reproduction rate shot up in Germany after the country eased lockdown restrictions and saw localised outbreaks.

On Monday scientists estimated that the closely-monitored R rate shot up to 2.88 - far above R1, the level of exponential spread.

The WHO has warned that the pandemic is currently accelerating worldwide, and that the globe has already entered “a new and dangerous phase” in the virus spread - even as European countries relax social distancing measures.

The United States and Brazil are seeing the highest number of new cases, with Brazil topping 1million cases.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday: “Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and economies but the virus is still spreading fast, it is still deadly and most people are still susceptible.

“We call on all countries and all people to exercise extreme vigilance.”

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