The COVID-19 pandemic may be waning but other viruses have become so prevalent on Cyprus that emergency departments in hospitals are filling up constantly, seeing patients waiting in hallways for service.

The flu and respiratory virus season has overtaken the public health system’s ability to deal with public hospitals on Feb. 14 reporting their emergency rooms were at full capacity, said Philnews.

It was almost the same in private hospitals where the three largest who are affiliated with the General Health Scheme said they had one bed or none at all in their emergency departments, the report said.

Cyprus has been hit with a triple whammy of the lingering Coronavirus, flu and Respiratory Synctial Virus (RSV) that’s affecting mainly the elderly, who had been the biggest victims of COVID as well.

The report said that the hospitals had a problem before the flu season set in and were already nearing capacity and having to keep patients longer for critical case because they were more ill.

“The need to increase the number of emergency department beds available in Cyprus is huge,” a source who wasn’t named told the news site.

“We have been warning for years that planning is a must, the needs should be properly calculated and then proceed with the setting up of emergency department beds because the problem, which is an international one over the recent years, exists permanently in Cyprus as well,” he also said