BARCELONA, Spain: The unrelenting increase in COVID-19 infections in Spain following the holiday season is again straining hospitals, threatening the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the forefront of the pandemic for nearly a year.
In Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, the critical care capacity has more than doubled and is nearly full, with 80 percent of ICU beds occupied by coronavirus patients.
“There are young people of 20-something-years-old and older people of 80-years-old, all the age groups,” said Dr. Joan Ramon Masclans, who heads the ICU. “This is very difficult, and it is one patient after another.”
Even though authorities allowed gatherings of up to 10 people for Christmas and New Year celebrations, Masclans chose not to join his family and spent the holidays at home with his partner.
“We did it to preserve our health and the health of others. And when you see that this isn’t being done (by others) it causes significant anger, added to the fatigue,” he said.
A study released this month by Hospital del Mar looking at the impact of the spring’s COVID-19 surge on more than 9,000 health workers across Spain found that at least 2 percent suffered major depression. That is six times higher than the rate in the general population before the pandemic, said Dr. Jordi Alonso, one of the chief researchers.
In addition, the study found that nearly half of participants had a high risk of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks or substance- and alcohol-abuse problems.
Spanish health care workers are far from the only ones to have suffered psychologically from the pandemic. In China, the levels of mental disorders among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50 percent reporting depression, 45 percent reporting anxiety and 34 percent reporting insomnia, according to the World Health Organization.
In the UK, a survey released last week by the Royal College of Physicians found that 64% of doctors reported feeling tired or exhausted. One in four sought out mental health support.
“It is pretty awful at the moment in the world of medicine,” Dr. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in a statement accompanying the study. “Hospital admissions are at the highest-ever level, staff are exhausted, and although there is light at the end of the tunnel, that light seems a long way away.”
Dr. Aleix Carmona, a third-year anesthesiology resident in Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia, didn’t have much ICU experience before the pandemic hit. But as surgeries were canceled, Carmona was summoned to the ICU at the Moisès Broggi hospital outside Barcelona to fight a virus the world knew very little about.
“In the beginning, we had a lot of adrenaline. We were very frightened but we had a lot of energy,” Carmona recalled. He plowed through the first weeks of the pandemic without having much time to process the unprecedented battle that was unfolding.
It wasn’t until after the second month that he began feeling the toll of seeing first-hand how people were slowly dying as they ran out of breath. He pondered what to tell patients before intubating them. His initial reaction had always been to reassure them, tell them it would be alright. But in some cases he knew that wasn’t true.
“I started having difficulty sleeping and a feeling of anxiety before each shift,” Carmona said, adding that he would return home after 12 hours feeling like he had been beaten up.
For a while he could only sleep with the help of medication. Some colleagues started taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. What really helped Carmona, though, was a support group at his hospital, where his co-workers unloaded the experiences they had bottled up inside.
But not everyone joined the group. For many, asking for help would make them seem unfit for the job.
“In our profession, we can handle a lot,” said David Oliver, a spokesman for the Catalonia chapter of the SATSE union of nurses. “We don’t want to take time off because we know we will add to the workload of our colleagues.”
The most affected group of health care workers, according to the study, were nurse’s aides and nurses, who are overwhelmingly women and often immigrants. They spent more time with dying COVID-19 patients, faced poor working conditions and salaries and feared infecting family members.
Desirée Ruiz is the nurse supervisor at Hospital del Mar’s critical care unit. Some nurses on her team have asked to take time off work, unable to cope with the constant stress and all the deaths.
To prevent infections, patients are rarely allowed family visits, adding to their dependency on nurses. Delivering a patient’s last wishes or words to relatives on the phone is especially challenging, Ruiz said.
“This is very hard for ... people who are holding the hand of these patients, even though they know they will end up dying,” she said.
Ruiz, who organizes the nurses’ shifts and makes sure the ICU is always staffed adequately, is finding it harder and harder to do so.
Unlike in the summer, when the number of cases fell and health workers were encouraged to take holidays, doctors and nurses have been working incessantly since the fall, when virus cases picked up again.
The latest resurgence has nearly doubled the number of daily cases seen in November, and Spain now has the third-highest COVID-19 infection rate in Europe and the fourth-highest death toll, with more than 55,400 confirmed fatalities.
But unlike many European countries, including neighboring Portugal, the Spanish health minister has for now ruled out the possibility of a new lockdown, relying instead on less drastic restrictions that aren’t as damaging to the economy but take longer to decrease the rate of infections.
Alonso fears the latest surge of virus patients could be as detrimental to the mental health of medical staff as the shock of the pandemic’s first months.
“If we want to be cared for adequately, we also need to take care of the health care workers, who have suffered and are still suffering,” he said.
Spain’s virus surge hits mental health of front-line workers
https://arab.news/gg727
Spain’s virus surge hits mental health of front-line workers
- Spanish health care workers are far from the only ones to have suffered psychologically from the pandemic
- To prevent infections, patients are rarely allowed family visits, adding to their dependency on nurses
Russia launches barrage of 99 drones and missiles on Ukraine’s energy system, officials say
Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator, Ukrenergo, said Friday’s attack deliberately targeted thermal and hydroelectric power plants across central and western regions
KYIV: Moscow launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure Friday, with a mass barrage of 99 drones and missiles hitting regions across the country, Ukraine’s armed forces said.
Air raid warnings rang out across the nation, with 10 Ukrainian regions coming under fire, the country’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said.
Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukraine in recent days, launching several missile barrages on the capital, Kyiv, and hitting energy infrastructure across the country in apparent retaliation for recent Ukrainian aerial attacks on the Russian border region of Belgorod. Such sporadic attacks, however, have been common throughout the war.
Large-scale blackouts have already affected Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv, where 700,000 people lost power after the city’s thermal power plant was hit in a drone and missile attack on March 22.
In the winter of 2022-23, Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing frequent blackouts. Many in Ukraine and the West expected that Russia might repeat that strategy this winter, but Russia instead initially focused its strikes on Ukraine’s defense industries.
Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator, Ukrenergo, said Friday’s attack deliberately targeted thermal and hydroelectric power plants across central and western regions.
In a statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine’s Kaniv and Dniester hydroelectric power stations had come under attack and accused Moscow of risking an ecological disaster similar to the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023.
Both Kyiv and Moscow have accused the other of destroying the dam, but the various Russian allegations — that it was hit by a missile or taken down by explosives — fail to account for a blast so strong that it registered on seismic monitors in the region.
The dam’s destruction led to deadly flooding, endangered crops, threatened drinking water supplies for thousands and unleashed an environmental catastrophe.
Zelensky also warned that other countries would be threatened if the dams were hit. Dnister Hydroelectric station, located near the city of Novodnistrovsk, Ukraine, is approximately 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the border with Moldova.
“Not only is Ukraine under threat, but Moldova too,” Zelensky said. “The water will not stop in front of the border.”
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private electricity operator, also said that three of its thermal power plants had been damaged in the attacks. It announced emergency power shutdowns in the city of Odesa, leaving several neighborhoods without power.
Five people, including a 5-year-old girl, were wounded during the attack in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, said local Gov. Serhii Lysak.
He later said that another man had been killed and one more injured in a separate drone attack Friday.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian police said rescuers had recovered the body of a 66-year-old woman from a building in the Mykolaiv region that was hit by a Russian missile Thursday night.
The bombardment in the west of Ukraine caused the Polish Armed Forces to scramble its own aircraft, the country’s operational command said on social media.
Last week, Warsaw demanded an explanation from Moscow after one of its missiles strayed briefly into Polish airspace during a major missile attack on Ukraine, prompting the NATO member to activate F-16 fighter jets.
Romania’s defense ministry also said on Friday that an investigation has been launched after fragments that appeared to be from a drone were identified on its territory Thursday evening in an agricultural area of Braila county, close to the border with Ukraine.
It did not provide additional details, although since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, NATO member Romania has confirmed drone fragments on its territory on several occasions.
Belgorod also came under fire Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense wrote on social media. It said that it shot down 15 Ukrainian shells, with falling debris damaging a number of residential buildings. No casualties were reported.
Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov later said on social media that one man had died as the result of a separate drone attack which struck an apartment block.
Daesh says four members arrested over Moscow attack
- Moscow has detained 12 people and charged eight with “terror-related offenses” over their alleged roles in the attack
- A Moscow court has remanded the four main suspects in custody until May 22
BAGHDAD: The Daesh group said Friday four of its members had been arrested after they attacked a concert hall near Moscow killing 143 people, a day after Russia blamed Ukraine.
On March 22, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City concert hall near Moscow, setting the venue alight and wounding 80 people.
Moscow has detained 12 people and charged eight with “terror-related offenses” over their alleged roles in the attack. They include four suspects from Tajikistan who are accused of carrying it out, Russian state media said.
Daesh swiftly claimed the attack, although Moscow has said repeatedly that the attackers had links to “Ukrainian nationalists” — a claim Kyiv rejects.
In the latest issue of its weekly Al-Nabaa magazine published Friday on Telegram channels, the group said its fighters had been hunted down by ground and air forces.
The operation ended when the men were surrounded in “a forest,” Daesh said, adding that they were now in “captivity.”
-- a date likely to be extended until their trial.
Russia has been a repeated target of attack by Daesh, in retaliation for its suppression of unrest in Muslim-majority regions and its support for President Bashar Assad’s government in the civil war in Syria.
France asks for foreign police and military help with massive Paris Olympics security challenge
- The Interior Ministry said Friday that the request for foreign security assistance was made in January, seeking nearly 2,185 reinforcements
- The officers are sought to help with Games security and “the spectator experience” and to “strengthen international cooperation,” the ministry said
PARIS: France says it has asked 46 countries if they would be willing to supply more than 2,000 police officers to help secure the Paris Olympics this summer, as organizers finalize security planning for the French capital’s first Games in a century while on heightened alert against potential attacks.
The Interior Ministry said Friday that the request for foreign security assistance was made in January, seeking nearly 2,185 reinforcements. The officers are sought to help with Games security and “the spectator experience” and to “strengthen international cooperation,” the ministry said.
“This is a classic approach of host countries for the organization of major international events,” the ministry added.
It noted that France sent 200 of its gendarmes to soccer’s World Cup in Qatar in 2022 and also welcomed 160 officers from other European security forces for the Rugby World Cup that France hosted last year.
Separately, the French Defense Ministry has also asked foreign nations for “small numbers” of military personnel who could help with “very specific” tasks at the Games, including sniffer dog teams, said Col. Pierre Gaudillière, spokesman for the army general staff.
Poland’s defense minister said his country will be sending soldiers to the Paris Games. The Polish armed forces delegation will include dog handlers and “its main goal will be to undertake activities related to the detection of explosives and counteracting terrorist phenomena.” the minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, posted on X.
Security is the biggest challenge for Paris Games organizers in a city that has been repeatedly hit by deadly attacks by Islamic extremists and which is expecting as many as 15 million visitors for the July 26-Aug. 11 Games and Paralympics that follow.
Security concerns are notably high for the opening ceremony, which will involve boats along the Seine River and huge crowds watching from the embankments.
France’s government increased its security alert posture to the highest level in the wake of the recent deadly attack at a Russian concert hall and Daesh’s claim of responsibility.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced the decision in a post on X, saying authorities were “taking into account Daesh’s claim of responsibility for the (Moscow) attack and the threats weighing on our country.″
EU parliament urged to probe Russian propaganda network
- Moscow also paid money to MEPs to promote Russian propaganda, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said
- The EU parliament’s political groups now want the assembly to probe the latest claims
BRUSSLES: The European Parliament came under pressure on Friday to investigate a Russia-financed network that wielded influence across Europe and involved EU lawmakers.
The Czech Republic said on Wednesday its spies discovered the network had been spreading Russian propaganda through the Prague-based Voice of Europe news site.
Moscow also paid money to MEPs to promote Russian propaganda, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said on Thursday.
The EU parliament’s political groups now want the assembly to probe the latest claims.
Valerie Hayer, who heads the centrist Renew grouping, wrote to parliament president Roberta Metsola to demand “a full and transparent internal investigation.”
“If sitting MEPs or candidates in the upcoming European elections have taken money from the Russian government or their proxies, they must be exposed and action taken,” she said.
The Renew group also called for an “urgent debate” in the parliament.
The Greens said there needed to be a “swift and thorough” investigation.
“This is how (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is trying to get away with his war in Ukraine.... It’s a direct attack on the very fabric of our democracy,” said Terry Reintke, one of the lead candidates for the Greens in the European elections in June.
“The politicians who have received money from Russia should be severely punished, both politically and legally,” she added in a statement.
A spokesperson for the parliament said it was “currently looking into the findings of the Czech authorities regarding outlet ‘Voice of Europe’ in coordination with its institutional partners.”
The spokesperson added that the parliament already prohibits access to the institution for media that are EU sanctions lists.
EU lawmakers face strict rules regarding independence and ethics and can face penalties — financial and otherwise — if they violate them.
The European politicians involved have not been named but the Greens and a Czech daily claimed they came from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland.
Fasting left me in awe of discipline required to observe Ramadan
- Writer describes being left in a ‘post-hunger state’
LONDON: Ramadan holds multiple points of significance for the Muslim world. Perhaps most famous for its month-long fast, it is also believed to have been when the first verses of the Qur’an were revealed to Muhammad.
Neither Muslim, nor someone who had before — at least knowingly — fasted, the request from Arab News to do one and write about it left me with several questions.
Why? What would there be to write about besides feeling hungry and thirsty? And would I buckle and gorge on the Sainsbury’s grocery delivery I had lined up for the proposed day?
It turned out that having successfully gone from dawn to dusk without breaking the fast, I did indeed have some self-control when it came to eating.
Perhaps more importantly, it provided an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of why friends I know do it, and what it offers to the Muslim community, not to mention leaving me in awe of the physical and mental will required to fast for the full month.
Waking up a little after 3:30 a.m., I followed the instructions provided by my colleague Zaynab: “Eggs, banana, porridge.” I gave the dates a miss, mainly through forgetfulness.
At this point I should state that the absence of food or water for one 14.5-hour stretch did not leave me overly nervous. In fact, given it was to be a single day, I would say to write anything on it was, if anything, quite bizarre considering the famines gripping swathes of the world.
Speaking to a friend and Arab News colleague Tarek, I did, however, question how faithful people were when it came to missing out on any drink during daylight hours.
“No, not one drop, sir,” he said before agreeing that given a propensity for human social engagement to inform some form of consumption, this period of abstinence obviously affected social relations.
He added: “But there are other effects, including dizziness, fatigue, lethargy, lack of focus, and cravings — one day is fine but it is doing it consistently that makes it tough.”
Tarek’s reflections came about five hours into my own fast, and having followed Zaynab’s recommendations, I can confirm that I was not feeling any pangs of hunger at this stage, but by about midday I was finding my attention drawn more toward water.
I spoke to other observant Muslim friends, and one thing that came across was that while there was a general uniformity toward the observation of the fast, it was not monolithic.
For instance, one friend said that they did without food for the whole period, but abstaining from water was somewhat dependent on the time of year that Ramadan fell: if in the summer, they would do without all drinks but water.
Another friend, Nabila, said she was stricter than most of her friends and family, additionally doing without music as part of her observation of the holy month.
She added: “The way I see it is that it is one month. For the rest of the year we can do what we want, but through that one month of observation I gain a lot and I become more focused on some of the ills of society; that in turn helps me readjust my engagement with the world.”
Nabila’s focus on those undergoing forced fasts, with this year’s Ramadan coinciding with the largest assault on Gaza in a generation, was shared by others I spoke to or heard.
Speaking to the BBC, Dr. Amjad Eleiwa, the deputy director of the emergency department at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, said that Palestinians in Gaza had “already been fasting for months,” with others noting the “dark shadow” Israel’s war had cast over what Nabila said should be a joyous time.
She added: “It’s not easy, though. I have little or no energy and I struggle with work. You won’t see me out. It is not easy and anyone who says it is, well, they’ve probably not committed.”
Equally, however, Nabila noted that the breaking of the fast each day brought its own reward, describing the anticipation immediately before eating as a feeling “of excitement, that ends in a sense of euphoria … I can’t really describe it.”
As my own, solitary day of fasting came to an end, I found myself feeling, as it was suggested I might, almost in a post-hunger state. How did I break my fast? A yogurt.