How Many Hospital Beds Are There In Slovenia?

The danger of complacency over COVID-19 is that the infection spreads too quickly and hospital beds, along with healthcare workers’ schedules, get full to capacity, leaving little or nothing for patients with other conditions. This raises the possibility – as seen in Italy – of the system thus focusing attention on those most likely to recover, and letting the illness take its course among others (the older, the sicker).

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In short, if you’re young and in general good health, your personal safety should not be a concern. More important is the safety of those around you – the old and sick who are more likely to die from COVID-19, as well as those, yourself included, who might need an emergency trip to the hospital in the next few months. The idea, as expressed in this widely shared image, is to spread out the epidemic and not overwhelm the healthcare system, both formal and informal.

But how many hospital beds are there in Slovenia, and how do the numbers compare with other countries?

Using Eurostat data for 2017, there are a total of 2.6 million hospital beds in the EU28 (including the UK), counting those for curative care, long-term care and rehabilitative care, of which just 9,294 are in Slovenia, compared to 661,448 in Germany. Of course, Slovenia has a much smaller population, two million vs 82.8 million, so let’s look at the number of hospital beds per 100,000 people. Here Germany has 800 beds for every 100,000 people, or eight for every 1,000. In contrast, Slovenia has 449 beds for every 100,000 residents, or 4.49 for every 1,000, just between Malta and Switzerland.

The full list of countries, and beds per 100,000 people, is shown below, and note that no data was given for Albania. The Eurostat data can be explored further here.