with the fifth wave, the fatigue and resignation of caregivers in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Brussels

The half-open door of a room lets filter the exchanges of three nurses who are busy around a patient. In an adjoining room, a young man on a ventilator glances tiredly at a working TV. In this ten-bed intensive care unit at the Saint-Elisabeth site of the Cliniques de l’Europe, south of Brussels, two remain empty for lack of personnel, while the fifth wave of Covid-19 is announced and the variant Omicron from the coronavirus is spreading in Europe.

“Our big problem is clearly the rate of absenteeism among our staff, explains Saskia Liessens, manager in the care department. They are sick, Covid-19 or not. We have a lot of children in quarantine so our staff can’t come. “

Here, two full-time nurses are needed per patient. Blue blouse and pants, determined step, Dr Coenen has been working here for six years and when asked how he is, he says he is resigned. “We don’t have much control over what happens to us, he sighs. So we do with what we have as a weapon and we are always so sorry to see somes family situations evolve badly. It’s still human catastrophes. ” A disaster, he says, which mainly strikes the unvaccinated. “I am sad to see patients who have made the decision, which is theirs, not to be vaccinated, he laments. But they are still very sick. “

“It’s sad that they haven’t been able to get the information they need to make the right decision. When you have to tell a family that it’s the end, it’s saddening.”

Same observation with his head of department, Dr Collin: “Many of them regret it and the family also regret it, often, he emphasizes. We do our job: I don’t ask myself any more questions at this level. Otherwise, you no longer treat smoker’s lung cancer or heart attacks. So we treat everyone. Now we have this new virus that has emerged and we will have to learn to live with it. “ As we have learned to do with the flu, continues the doctor, who admits a certain fatigue, after almost two years of pandemic.