Hospital beds (illustrative)
Hospital beds (illustrative)iStock

Israeli hospitals have raised concerns that they will face a severe shortage of beds come winter, Maariv reported.

According to the report, the hospitals are concerned that their internal medicine departments will collapse due to needing to handle both coronavirus and annual flu.

Currently, some of Israel's 111 internal medicine wards have been turned into coronavirus units, straining the remaining units.

Over the past two weeks, two internal medicine wards in Nahariya's hospital closed after a patient was diagnosed with coronavirus, and a significant number of staff members went into quarantine.

Senior doctors expect that since the wards are currently experiencing a situation similar to that usually experienced during the winter, the combination of coronavirus and flu will put the wards at an unprecedented 250% capacity.

A medical source who works closely with internal medicine wards said, "It's funny to talk about preparation when there is no preparation. Obviously, each hospital is taking a different tactic, but in almost all of them, some of the internal medicine wards turn into coronavirus wards, and some remain regular [wards]. The more the virus spreads, the more coronavirus wards will be opened at the expense of internal medicine [wards]."