Corona current: Zittau chief physician Wolfgang Eipperle dies of virus

“Corona hero” from Zittau dies
Chief physician falls victim to the insidious pandemic

© Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock

Wolfgang Eipperle, as chief physician for internal medicine at the clinic in the Corona hotspot Zittau, saved many people’s lives. Now he succumbed to Covid 19 himself at the age of only 61.

Sad news from the Oberlausitzer Bergland Clinic in Zittau, Saxony: The chief physician of the Department of Internal Medicine, Wolfgang Eipperle, died on March 11th at the age of 61. The clinic announced this in an obituary notice on its website. The doctor succumbed to Covid-19 disease, reports the “Sächsische Zeitung”.

“In our cooperation, which unfortunately only lasted 10 months, we were able to get to know Dr. Eipperle as a friendly and well-respected chief physician who is always concerned about his patients”, declared the hospital’s management and works council. Particularly tragic: Eipperle also managed the Corona station in Zittau and saved the lives of many Covid 19 patients there. Now he himself lost the fight against the virus at the Dresden University Hospital.

Zittau: Chief physician Wolfgang Eipperle dies of Covid-19 at the age of 61

Eipperle only came to the clinic last year. In winter, the second wave of the pandemic hit Zittau particularly hard, and hardly any city had higher incidence values. As the “Sächsische Zeitung” reported, the Zittau registry office issued four times as many death certificates at the height of the second wave as in previous years. The crematoria could hardly handle all the funerals, the pictures of stacked coffins from the Saxon city went through the whole country.

In the meantime, the clinic was unable to accept any new Covid 19 patients. In some cases, more than a hundred corona deaths per day were recorded in Zittau at that time – without Wolfgang Eipperle it might have been even more. Numerous people in the city and on the Internet praised the commitment of the “Corona hero” and said goodbye. “It is tragic that the chief physician, who helped the corona patients on the front line, was himself a victim of this treacherous pandemic. Our sympathy belongs to his relatives,” said Zittau’s Mayor Thomas Zenker.

Swell: Klinikum Oberlausitzer Bergland / “Sächsische Zeitung” (1) / “Sächsische Zeitung” (2)

This article originally appeared on stern.de.

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