EHS Secretary General, Professor Eleftherios Tsiridis
Travel is our main priority during August and every European country is pushing for Generation Z to get vaccinated, as of course it is the kids, teens and those in their early 20s who are most likely to carry the virus unknowingly and who are less likely to have been vaccinated yet. In Greece, we have called for 15-17 year olds to get vaccinated and I believe most European countries are doing the same now, as we all move forwards together to build a wall of immunity against this virus.
The World Health Organization has reported substantial increases in new cases of Covid-19 in the Americas and the Western Pacific Regions (30% and 25% more than last week, respectively). Meanwhile in Europe there has been a 3% increase and new deaths have not increased, so that is reassuring news. SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern as we all well know are currently Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.
Our maps on the current state of the pandemic this month are from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (an EU agency).
Please scroll down to enjoy our Diary of an Orthopaedic Surgeon, this month from Shanghai: thank you very much to our esteemed member Prof Chi Zhang, EHS International Member from the PR of China. Please do contact the EHS Secretarial Office via our Membership Secretary (samstokesehs@gmail.com) with reports on the COVID-19 developments in your area which you would like to share directly with our fellow hip surgeon members. Thank you.
The impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of Orthopaedic Surgery: a view from the PR of China, by Prof Chi Zhang
Dear Colleagues!
It is my honour to serve as the monthly Ambassador for the European Hip Society. As we know the COVID-19 changed everything, I want to share some personal experiences and feelings about my professional and personal life as a hip surgeon at Zhongshan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
When COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan in January 2020, medical workers in Shanghai began to take action and carried out a lot of work. In my hospital all elective surgery was paused on 1st February and all the departments shifted their focus and joined the hospital’s effort to fight Covid-19. At that time, urgent surgical cases continued throughout the period. Thanks to strict regulation and government controls, the Covid-19 virus was not widespread in Shanghai. All Covid patients in Shanghai were transferred to designated hospitals and treated well. Therefore, elective surgery was reinstated on 1st April 2020 under strict requirements and by the middle of May almost full operative capacity could be achieved.
We cancelled or postponed a lot of offline scientific conferences at the most dangerous period of the virus epidemic. But now we can arrange face to face scientific conferences in Shanghai.
I look forward to when we will be able to travel freely again and meet and share our clinical and scientific knowledge with all EHS members around the world. I especially look forward in anticipation to the next EHS meeting in Lille 2021 and I am sure it will be a great success.
I wish all my colleagues around the world health and safety.
Sincerely,
Prof Chi Zhang
Department of Orthopeadic Surgery
Zhongshan Hospital
Fudan University
Shanghai, China
