Reports

Brazil has the second highest number of cases of COVID-19 in the world, facing more than 1,000 deaths per day. However, due to underreporting among many regions in the country, the actual numbers are unknown. 

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in my French region and also in Grenoble has radically changed how teaching classes have been organised in our Grenoble Alpes University Medical School.

On the 6^thof April I received a phone call around 9am, from the chief-nurse of the Campaign Hospital of Porto (HCP), asking If I was still available for helping as a volunteer. My answer was crystal clear: yes

Please tell us about your experience with the current COVID-19 pandemic in your hospital

With over 27.000 positively tested patients in the Netherlands, all hospitals had to make major adaptations to their general practice. Non-urgent care has been put on hold or shifted to telephone/video appointments and departments rapidly created extra capacity for COVID-19 patients with regards to locations as well as staff.

Our country was relatively proactive in the containment measures it took, which meant that there was not a drastic and calamitous increase in the number of people infected and, necessarily, in the number of deaths caused by the virus.

I believe that the covid-19 pandemic showed us that we, as neurologists, are physicians first, and neurologists second. In other words, as neurology has increasingly developed into an acute care field, it is important that we are not only specialists in neurology, but also strive to build and keep expertise in fields adjacent to our core competences. 

I am Nina Khizanishvili, a young neurologist from Tbilisi, Georgia. I currently work in Germany but I still get a lot of information about the situation in the First University Clinic of Tbilisi State Medical University in my home country.

Please tell us about your experience with the current COVID-19 pandemic in your hospital

As in most hospitals, the current pandemic has had a significant impact on how the hospital is operated. The Department of Neurology was organised according to the following priorities: 1.) Accident & Emergency and Stroke Unit, 2.) Ward, 3.) Outpatient Clinic and Neurophysiology Units.

Italy has been the first European country to be violently hit by the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19. Yet devastating, luckily the draconian measures undertaken avoided a larger spread across the whole nation. Then, the areas where the first outbreak took place are facing dramatic situations given the high volume of patients requiring hospital care, while in the rest of the country the spread of the virus has had less impact on the hospital capacity.