LISBON – At Lisbon’s Military Hospital, hundreds of troops have spent frantic weeks rushing to turn every available space into makeshift COVID-19 wards, as Portugal scrambles to cope with a sudden deluge of cases engulfing its public health system.
The hospital’s waiting rooms, consulting rooms and atriums have been filled with beds. This week, the canteen is being sacrificed.
It’s the last space left. “In the first nine months (of the pandemic), we tripled our capacity” of beds, said Brigadier General Rui Sousa, a 20-year army doctor who heads the Military Hospital.
In January, “we’ve had to triple that tripled capacity,” he told The Associated Press. A January pandemic surge has stretched medical services in Portugal to a breaking point.