{"id":308620,"date":"2021-07-26T21:37:45","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T18:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/hospitals-overwhelmed-in-senegals-capital-as-virus-surges\/"},"modified":"2021-07-26T21:37:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T18:37:45","slug":"hospitals-overwhelmed-in-senegals-capital-as-virus-surges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/hospitals-overwhelmed-in-senegals-capital-as-virus-surges\/","title":{"rendered":"#Hospitals overwhelmed in Senegal’s capital as virus surges"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Hospitals overwhelmed in Senegal’s capital as virus surges<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Senegal’s health ministry said Monday that hospitals in the capital Dakar were “close to saturation” due to a surge in COVID-19 patients, with overworked medical personnel facing burnout.\n <\/p>\n

The West African country has suffered a third wave of virus infections in recent weeks, with cases rising from a few dozen a day late last month to about 1,700 in July. <\/p>\n

Health authorities have registered most of the new cases in Dakar, a city of over three million people.<\/p>\n

The national director of public health institutions, Ousmane Diallo, told AFP that the third wave had been more severe than the previous two.<\/p>\n

“We are overwhelmed and close to saturation, with almost 99 percent of beds occupied in Dakar,” he said, explaining that the city has 602 hospital beds.<\/p>\n

Medical staff in the capital are “very tired and burned out,” Diallo added. <\/p>\n

Bed occupancy stands at about 45 percent in the rest of the country, he said. <\/p>\n

A surge in coronavirus cases is also causing delay in receiving COVID test results in the poor nation of 16 million people.<\/p>\n

Health ministry spokesman Mamadou Ndiaye said that labs were “overwhelmed because of high demand.”<\/p>\n

Senegal has recorded over 57,000 cases since the start of the pandemic, of which more than 1,200 have been fatal. <\/p>\n

There are fears that last week’s Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, which saw many people travel<\/a> to meet family, will increase the caseload.<\/p>\n

Senegal’s vaccination campaign resumed on Saturday after an interruption, with the delivery of 151,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.<\/p>\n

About 640,000 people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine so far.<\/p>\n

President Macky Sall has threatened to close borders and restrict internal travel should the health situation deteriorate.<\/p>\n

He has so far avoided imposing strict measures to curb the virus, relying instead on personal responsibility.<\/p>\n

A curfew and limits on gatherings were lifted after riots broke out in March.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Senegal sees dramatic COVID-19 surge as major holiday looms\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2021 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Hospitals overwhelmed in Senegal’s capital as virus surges (2021, July 26)
\n retrieved 26 July 2021
\n from https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news<\/a>\/2021-07-hospitals-overwhelmed-senegal-capital-virus.html<\/p>\n

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