Patients in the ICU. | Ultima Hora

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The Ministry of Health says Covid patients may have to be transferred to the mainland because there's a severe lack of ICU beds in Mallorca.

"We are extremely saturated, there is not a single ICU bed and Mallorca and Ibiza are completely saturated," warned Dr Carolina Pérez, Simebal’s delegate at Son Espases.

Besides the increase in Covid patients, there’s also an influx of traffic accident victims and people who’ve had heart attacks.

“Every summer the ICUs are saturated and now we have Covid patients on top of that. We have had to take polytrauma patients to resuscitation beds and the anaesthetists do what they can, but it is not the same,” said Dr Pérez, who said on Friday that Son Espases Hospital only had three beds left for critical patients for the whole weekend.

”On Thursday, there were two traffic accidents and one cardiac arrest and we had two patients intubated for six hours in the emergency room waiting for a place," explains Dr Pérez.

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Simebal representatives said IB-Salut should be appealing to the public to be cautious to prevent infection.

"On Sunday patients may have to be sent to Barcelona in ambulance planes," they warned.

“The ICUs are quite stressed and whatever is necessary will be done,” said Servei Care Director, Eugenia Carandell, who doesn’t believe it will be necessary to transfer patients to the mainland. "We have a patient who was going to be transferred to Barcelona but in the end it wasn’t necessary," she added. “We are struggling to find enough critical beds, but we have a fairly well-organised system for 061 and when necessary we can ask for help from the private sector.”

Carandell also warned that the number of Covid patients in the ICU will reach a peak on Sunday, but after that more patients will be discharged.

“There’s already been a decrease in the number of Covid patients being hospitalised, but it takes 2-3 weeks for numbers to decrease in the ICUs," she added.