Amsterdam hospital building a large “corona care unit”

The OLVG location in Amsterdam West is building a large "Corona Care Unit" where patients who think they have the virus can have a CT scan done to check. "These are people who have been referred by a GP or specialist," a spokesperson for the hospital said to Amsterdam broadcaster AT5. "Thanks to the CT scan, we can immediately distinguish."

A CT scan can show whether a patient has a lung condition that indicates the coronavirus. The presence of the lung condition is only a "strong suspicion" that the patient has the coronavirus, the spokesperson said. If that is the case, the person has to take a separate entrance to get into the hospital for the official Covid-19 test. "This way we can ensure that patients go into isolation immediately, without infecting others."

Other hospitals, including in Maastricht, already use CT scans to quickly differentiate between patients who likely have Covid-19 and those who have other lung diseases. But the OLVG care unit will be remarkably large, the spokesperson said. "There will be fourteen rooms, suitable for a large influx of patients." The care unit is expected to open on Wednesday. People who think they have the coronavirus should go there directly.