Madrid hospital struggles with surge in virus cases

"We're swamped," admits Ricardo Diaz Abad, head of intensive care at this hospital in Leganes, south-west of Madrid, standing in front of the unit's 12 beds, all filled with gravely ill Covid-19 patients. "Unfortunately we lost two patients" overnight, he tells as nurses tend to the patients, who range in age from 54 to nearly 80, through a glass window. Wearing white plastic suits, protective glasses, one or two masks, gloves and plastic shoe covers, the caregivers take turns to enter the unit. Inside, the heavy silence is broken only by the hiss of the ventilator machines that help the patients breathe, their vitals monitored on a host of glowing computer screens. Unlike the first wave when the hospital did not have enough beds for Covid patients, "we can now treat them because we have created space," said Diaz Abad. But staff fear once again being overwhelmed if infections continue to rise. Madrid and the surrounding region has been the worst-hit area of Spain, where the virus has so far claimed nearly 34,000 lives. At the height of the first wave in March, hospitals were swamped and officials turned a Madrid ice rink into a temporary morgue to cope with the surge in deaths.