Increasing numbers of corona and high levels of sick leave are affecting the operation of intensive care units in German clinics. “The high number of sick employees in particular is a problem for us in the health system – in addition, some are finally taking their well-deserved vacation to start the winter months with renewed energy,” said the President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi), Gernot Marx, the newspapers of the Funke media group.
55 percent of the 736 intensive care units worked in partially restricted or restricted operation. “Unfortunately, this is already a very high number that we have otherwise only seen in the colder seasons and a higher Covid load,” said Marx.
Self-government, telematics, Morbi-RSA: The briefing on health
According to the Divi daily report on Friday, 1072 patients were treated in intensive care, 25 more than the day before. That is about twice as many as at the same time last year and almost four times as many as in 2020, emphasized Marx. At the same time, almost 2,000 fewer intensive care beds are available than last year, mainly due to a lack of staff.
The care of the life-threateningly ill patients and emergency patients is secured everywhere. “But in the hospitals, numerous operations are being postponed again and staff have to be relocated,” Marx made clear.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) put the nationwide seven-day incidence on Saturday morning at 700.3. The day before, the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 699.5 (previous week: 696.5; previous month: 276.9).
However, the incidence does not provide a complete picture of the infection situation. Experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI – mainly because not all infected people have a PCR test done. Only positive PCR tests count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.
