Coronavirus: a ward of one of Budapest’s most important hospitals has secretly been closed

Photo: www.honvedkorhaz.hu

The number of patients with coronavirus has increased at the neurology department of the Hungarian Defence Forces Medical Centre (Honvédkórház), and it has been closed. The news on the medical institution’s website did not mention this either in September or October.

The number of coronavirus patients in the neurology department of the Honvédkórház has increased, so several other institutions have been designated for patients requiring inpatient care, napi.hu writes, referring to the Facebook post of health expert Zsombor Kunetz. Four other hospitals have been designated to treat the patients, two in Budapest, one in Vác and one in Kistarcsa.

The following hospitals have been designated for adult patients requiring active neurological inpatient specialist care:

Uzsoki Street Hospital (Budapest)
Flór Ferenc Hospital of Pest County (Kistarcsa)
Jávorszön Ödön Hospital (Vác)
Semmelweis University Clinical Centre (Budapest).

According to the justification, already on 27 September, the neurology department of the Defence Hospital had a “cumulative outbreak of Covid-19 infection” among patients, and therefore the admission of patients requiring general neurological care was cancelled until the epidemiological measures were lifted. Care for stroke patients will continue to be provided in an eight-bed intensive care unit.

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“Neither the National Centre for Public Health nor the Honvédkórház was too quick to announce the closure,” wrote Zsombor Kunetz. According to the expert, the pandemic has been going on for almost three years now, and the same clichés and unimaginative solutions have been chosen as three years ago.

According to Kunetz, the Honvédkórház would be able to deal with this issue at least at the level of the 20th century. There are military hospital tents and containers that can be set up in hours to isolate patients. On top of that, the buildings of the old pavilion system are still there on the site.