“For a long time, successive liquidation commissions, commonly known as governments, health ministries, and respective administrations, had determined the end of the Hospital Geral do Covões Emergency. Today was the final step/decision of a long-announced demise,” it highlights.
The administration of the Coimbra Local Health Unit (ULS), headed by Alexandre Lourenço, decided that the Emergency Service of the General Hospital, commonly known as Hospital dos Covões, would become a clinical care center from today.
With this change, the General Hospital will handle non-emergent acute situations and will only receive patients referred by the SNS24 Line or other hospital units, the ULS Coimbra indicated in a statement.
In a press release sent to the Lusa agency, the SEP indicates that in recent months, the administration of ULS Coimbra was changing the users’ access to that emergency, until there was no more reference from INEM for urgent situations.
As an example, the union notes that on Thursday, “incomprehensibly, the emergency nurses at Hospital dos Covões received an email from ULS Coimbra” informing that “by decision of the CA, from October 31 the SU will no longer have patients from 8:00 PM”.
“In this regard, we will change work shifts and request security to close the doors at 8:30 PM and reopen them at 7:30 AM,” it announces.
According to the decision of the Service director, the union notes, “patient registrations will only be until 6:00 PM to allow for patient observation and clinical guidance by 8:00 PM.”
A day later, the union notes, “retracting the previous statement, two nursing management officials visited the service and informed the workers present that from October 31, 2025, the emergency would permanently close.”
“We have long stated that, under the guise of the proclaimed synergies from the fusion of Coimbra hospitals, the so-called restructuring of the referral network of various medical specialties, the economy of scale, and whatever else interested them, for the attack and disfiguration of the SNS [National Health Service], the Hospital Geral dos Covões is the target to be eliminated. It had to be,” it emphasizes.
This is because, in the view of the Sindicato dos Enfermeiros Portugueses, “to the left of the Mondego riverbank, where the cap and the decaying tassel of the university do not like to go and never have gone,” and “where the hardworking people also reside.”
“The velvet coup of the fusion, which was nothing more than annexation aimed at the destruction of an institution. Simultaneously and gradually, a path is being constructed that leads to the hemorrhaging of human resources,” it considers.
For the union’s leadership, this decision “results in the necessary political convergence of the sectors most interested in the business of illness.”
“Let us not be naive. The path and plan for the Hospital Geral dos Covões (HGC) were and have been drawn. The Plan for the HGC was and continues to be the non-plan,” it writes.
In this regard, the union warns that “it will be at the forefront in defense of a universal, general, and free SNS,” for the “legitimate aspirations of users and professionals” and in a “clear rupture with the policy of quiet and velvet destruction of the SNS.”
It also “demands an effective and true hospital reorganization to strengthen the public response and not allow weaknesses that could lead to the flourishing of the private sector, as continues to happen in Coimbra.”
