To have the Chinese group Fosun as shareholder of Luz Saúde “was a great advantage” to take measures and prepare its hospital units in Portugal for the situation of COVID-19 pandemics, highlights Isabel Vaz in an interview to “Expresso” newspaper. The Luz Saúde CEO reveals to have been in China on January 2020 and that the information on the risk of COVID-19 was very clear: “One of the major lessons my Chinese colleagues taught me, was that it didn’t matter if we were going to have the obligation of treating COVID-19, because when the virus would reach the population, our units would have to be prepared at the level of separation of circuits for the suspected cases. They told us: “Set up a hospital inside the hospital” and that is what we did at Hospital da Luz Lisboa. The big help my Chinese colleagues gave me was to scare me seriously”. “They always told us not to let our guard down. Their experience also made us reinforce timely not only in terms of protection equipment, but in terms of the medications necessary to treat COVID-19”, adds Isabel Vaz . But this kind of crisis, she stresses, also shows us what is needed to improve and where we have to invest: “I, myself, have been doing that learning, in order to identify where I was fortunate. Because this will not be the only pandemics we will have to face and I don’t even know if the present one will not have a second surge, until a vaccine is developed”. Isabel Vaz states that, comparatively, the health public service, in terms particularly of specialists in intensive medicine and the number of beds in intensive care in Portugal, was not duly prepared for a situation of pandemics. She further explains that private hospitals started by being summoned by the National Health Service (SNS) to cooperate in the treatment of COVID-19 patients, which did not materialize, by option of the government. “The Portuguese people have been exemplary in the fulfilment of the General Directorate of Health indications and the observance of the state of emergency and, fortunately, in these last three weeks, the fears of lack of capacity of the SNS were not confirmed. There must have been motifs for the government to believe that it would no longer be necessary to articulate with the private sector, as initially thought”, she declares. “With the economy, we also save health” Along the interview, Luz Saúde CEO also anticipates that the group registered a 70-80% fall in its activity, with the declaration of the state of emergency and the subsequent confinement of people: “We opted for rescheduling non-urgent acts, in order to safeguard the capacity to treat infected people, as well as the availability of the personal protection equipment”. A reorganization of the network of units was also undertaken, to ensure care in all safety to chronic patients or with more complex pathologies, such as cancer. “We reinforced the protection of clients with immunomodulating therapeutics, such as oncologic patients and, in only two days, we transferred our oncology centre from Hospital da Luz Lisboa to the unit of Oeiras”. In parallel, however, there are positive indicators - such as the monthly record of births registered in March in Hospital da Luz Lisboa maternity, the almost 3 thousand video consultations in a month (in 40 specialties, via 50 virtual consulting rooms spread throughout Hospital da Luz national network), the availability of phone medical consultations and a 24-hour nursing line. “The pandemics had this positive aspect of digital acceleration”, she refers. Luz Saúde CEO alerts, on the other hand, that health and economy must be managed in concert at this moment: “In the sequence of COVID-19, we are in a moment of economic emergency, and there is another sanitary emergency related with the burden of the disease that, since it’s not treated, will increase. It is on the base of these three variables that the future of the affected countries is being played. And we cannot forget that with the economy, we also save health. One cannot be dissociated from the other. It is not health first, and then the economy. They are interwoven.” Isabel Vaz interview
