Feeling sick is prohibited: Cagliari's emergency room is in chaos, with hours of nightmares for staff and patients.

Cagliari and its province are prohibited from feeling ill: emergency rooms are in chaos, ambulances remain blocked, and the 118 ambulance may not arrive in the area because the available ones are stuck at the hospital. And sometimes, for a red code in Quartu, meaning a serious case, a team has to rush to Nuraminis.

This is the (terrible) state of health in the Sardinian capital at lunchtime on January 14, 2026. "It feels like we're back in the Covid era," says a longtime first responder who prefers to remain anonymous: the environment has been dominated by tension lately, and those who have come forward to report the dramatic situation have received angry phone calls from the highest levels of the Region.

For those forced to spend hours waiting for a patient to be admitted, for those who work in emergency rooms, and, above all, for the Sardinians who require care, the numbers speak for themselves. They're merciless. And they don't even paint the full picture.

The situation, as the afternoon has just begun, is explosive at Santissima Trinità: one red patient has been admitted (not the one from Quartu, which fortunately has been downgraded to yellow, but hasn't yet been seen), 16 orange patients are currently being examined, seven are on their way, and five more are waiting for someone to tell them what's wrong. Ten patients are classified as blue (the estimated wait for them is over 11 hours) and eight are green. Five red patients are being managed at Brotzu, 11 orange patients, and 17 blue patients. At the Policlinico, little changes: three red patients, 21 orange patients, 10 blue patients, and 10 green patients.

Excluding the less serious cases—which perhaps shouldn't have even been admitted to the emergency room—waiting times exceed legal limits. And the blame certainly doesn't lie with those working in the interconnected departments of the three hospitals. Chaos began to erupt overnight, and patients continue to arrive in constant flow. There are no beds in the other departments.

At Is Mirrionis, five basic ambulances and one MICHELIN (therefore relevant cases) had to wait a long time even just for triage: there are about ten vehicles outside. Four from Cagliari, then from Sinnai, Elmas, Nuraminis, Monastir, Quartu, and Domus de Maria.

So far, this is what can be gleaned from the publicly available data. Inside, the situation is more unofficial: patients who pass through the emergency room door remain on stretchers—or in chairs—sometimes for days. There are dozens of them, and they aren't counted in the regional emergency system's monitoring, which can be consulted online. And when they arrive in the internal wards or departments, there isn't necessarily a place for them. As happens in Medicine 1 , at Brotzu: treatments are administered in the corridor.