500 days of fight against pandemic in the the University Centre for Maritime and Tropical Medicine

22.07.2021

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University Centre for Maritime and Tropical Medicine in Gdynia (Uniwersyteckie Centrum Medycyny Morskiej i Tropikalnej w Gdyni) has been a key Pomeranian centre for the fight against the pandemic. The MUG’s clinical hospital has been fully prepared to take professional care for coronavirus-infected patients as the first one in Poland. By the Pomeranian Voivode’s decision, actions connected with COVID-19 prevention, counteracting, and combating have been realised at the UCMTM from 28th of February 2020 to 12th of July 2021. During this period almost 1 000 patients were treated in the hospital, including 46 of them at the Intensive Care Unit forming part of the Division of Hyperbaric Medicine & Maritime Rescue.

– Our patients were not only Tricity’s citizens, but also people from other parts of our country, who got to the UCC i.e. due to transplantations and then, regarding coronavirus infection, had to be hospitalized. There were also travelers among them, who, aside from SARS-CoV-2, were suffering from tropical diseases, e.g. malaria – explains Prof. Marcin Renke, Head of the UCMTM. – It’s worth adding that Poland’s first drive-thru SARS-CoV-2 virus samples collecting point in the UCMTM, where MUG’s students collected most of over 22 000 samples obtained from patients of the UCMTM.

Moreover, in 2021 in the UCMTM over 23 000 vaccinations against COVID-19 were carried on within newly-organised points: nodal, general and during action, Szczepimy się w majówkę carried out from 1st do 3rd of May in Gdynia.

Drive-thru COVID-19 test centre has been created at the initiative of scientists from the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine of the Medical University of Gdańsk, which is the leading unit in Poland and Middle-East Europe in the field of parasitic and tropical diseases. The Institute features many years of knowledge and experience, highly qualified employees, and facilities which allowed to create such a unique unit, supporting sanitary-epidemiological departments in the fight against COVID-19. Creating and functioning of the Centre was available due to support from the Pomeranian Voivode Dariusz Drelich, Provincial Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, University Centre of Maritime and Tropical Medicine (UCMTM), as well as the Authorities of the Medical University of Gdańsk and the MUG’s students, who have worked voluntarily in the samples collecting point and operated a helpline.