Status: 22.03.2021 6:44 a.m.
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The German intensive care physicians are concerned: The number of seriously ill Covid patients is increasing again. The doctors are therefore calling for stricter counter-steering in the pandemic. The seven-day incidence now climbs to 107.3.
After the first cautious easing of the pandemic, the number of corona patients in Germany’s intensive care units has risen again. With more than 3000 occupied beds, the load is currently as high as it was at the peak times in the first wave in spring 2020. This can be found in the register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI).
“We are now starting the third wave in the intensive care units and at a very high level. We had already warned about this at the end of February and that is causing us great concern,” said DIVI President Gernot Marx. According to Divi data, 3056 Covid 19 patients were treated in German intensive care units on Sunday. “We expect a rapid increase in the number of patients in the next few weeks, as the wave of intensive care patients always follows the wave of infections for two to three weeks,” he added. Any countermeasures now would therefore only have an impact on the figures from mid-April.
“Patients are getting younger”
With incidences of around 200 infections in seven days per 100,000 inhabitants, emergency doctors are forecasting around 5,000 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units at the beginning of May. That would be almost as many as at the height of the second wave at the beginning of January and could again put a heavy burden on many clinics.
The intensive care physicians are also cautiously optimistic: If there is no new, more dangerous mutant and the vaccination continues well, the pandemic could be as good as over for the emergency wards of the clinics in August according to the current forecast. Experts do not want to take the situation lightly. “We can already see in the intensive care units that the patients are changing there: They are getting younger,” said Lars Schaade, Vice President of the Robert Koch Institute.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) counts 21.6 million people in Germany in a high-risk group for severe Covid-19 courses. The institute considers the risk to be greatly increased for people over 65 years of age or with certain pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease or the most severe form of obesity.
Stricter lockdown and contact bans required
“With almost 6000 patients at the same time, Covid is by far the heaviest and strongest wave in intensive care medicine,” said the scientific director of the DIVI intensive care registry, Christian Karagiannidis. The current number of more than 3000 does not apply to the DIVI as a magical limit from which an overload of the system begins automatically. Karagiannidis emphasized that this order of magnitude can be supplied. “The more the number rises, the more other areas have to be restricted in order to guarantee emergency care.”
With a view to the deliberations of the states with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Karagiannidis told the “Rheinische Post”: “I expect the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to agree on nationwide uniform and very simple tightening.” It is crucial that all countries implement the same measures and that they are easy to understand. He calls for a return to a stricter lockdown like at the beginning of March and the closure of schools and daycare centers until there are sufficient test opportunities and contact options to be “massively” restricted.
7709 new infections
Meanwhile, the health authorities reported 7709 new infections to the RKI within 24 hours. In addition, 50 new deaths were recorded within one day. Exactly one week ago, the RKI reported 6604 new infections and 47 new deaths within one day. According to the RKI, the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants reported within seven days was 107.3 nationwide on Monday morning – and thus slightly higher than the previous day (103.9).
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