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Hunedoara city's local government asked today Health Minister Nelu Tataru to reverse the ministerial order that turns the city's "Dr. Alexandru Simionescu" Municipal Hospital into a COVID facility, on grounds that health care-wise, the decision will put at least one quarter of the Hunedoara County locals in an "extremely difficult situation".
In an open letter, Hunedoara mayor Dan Boboutanu suggests that the hospital's status remains the same as until now, treating both COVID-19 cases and non-COVID, general pathology illnesses.
The mayor also explains that the hospital's oxygen network was dimensioned for a normal workload, and that the facility will work at half capacity if it remains COVID-only hospital.
"Keeping a large hospital half empty is completely inefficient. If it takes the status of COVID hospital, Hunedoara's 'Dr. Alexandru Simionescu' Municipal Hospital will only be able to take in a maximum of 200-250 patients, while thousands of people will be sent away at a time when travel is completely ill-advised. All these patients could be treated just as well in Hunedoara, whether or not they are infected with SARS-CoV-2," the open letter reads.
In the document addressed to the Health Minister, the Prefect's Institution and the Public Health Directorate, mayor Dan Boboutanu also shows that the hospital serves 100,000 residents from the city and the so called 'Foresters Land', of whom over 22,000 are retirees, many of them chronically ill and unable to travel to other hospitals if needed.
