At Severo Ochoa hospital in a Madrid suburb badly-hit during the pandemic’s first wave, the intensive care unit is once again full and exhausted medics dread a repeat of the same “horror”. “We’re swamped,” admits Ricardo Diaz Abad, head of intensive care at this hospital in Leganes, south-west of Madrid, standing in front of the unit’s 12 beds, all filled with gravely ill Covid-19 patients. “Unfortunately we lost two patients” overnight, he tells AFP as nurses tend to the patients, who range in age from 54 to nearly 80, through a glass window. Wearing white plastic suits, protective glasses, one or two masks, gloves and plastic shoe covers, the caregivers take turns to enter the unit. Inside, the heavy silence is broken only by the hiss of the ventilator machines that help the patients breathe, their vitals monitored on a host of glowing computer screens. Unlike the first wave when the hospital did not have enough beds for Covid patients, “we can now treat them because we have created space,” said Diaz Abad. But staff fear once again being overwhelmed if infections continue to rise. ‘Even more tired’ When the pandemic hit in March, “the corridors were full of patients with oxygen bottles sitting on chairs,” said emergency doctor Luis Diaz Izquierdo, wearing a green gown and multicolour bandana, and with bags under his eyes. “The first wave required a great physical and emotional effort… (now) we’re even more tired because we haven’t had time to completely recover.”