Friday 19th November 2021
Does not reflect stress
Patient advocates criticize hospitalization rates
Politicians agree on new corona measures – which should be based on the hospitalization rate in the future. But the German Foundation for Patient Protection criticizes this value. It is not up to date, is the allegation.
From the point of view of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, the federal and state governments have still not created a reliable benchmark for assessing the corona situation. The hospitalization rate is neither a current figure, nor does the value reflect the actual burden on the hospitals, said board member Eugen Brysch.
A “Covid-19 radar” for the clinics that takes daily parameters into account is overdue, according to Brysch. This included people infected with corona, Covid 19 sufferers, corona deceased and the utilization of all wards.
The federal and state governments agreed on Thursday that if certain stress thresholds were exceeded in the clinics, uniformly tougher corona measures should take effect. The benchmark should be the hospitalization rate in the respective country. For this purpose, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) records reported clinical admissions of corona patients per 100,000 inhabitants over a seven-day period.
However, the reported figures do not reflect the actual situation. There are numerous late registrations, some of which drag on for weeks. The then corrected hospitalization rate is usually well above the one originally reported on the reference date.
Specifically, based on this, there will be three levels in the future, each with further restrictions – including nationwide access rules only for vaccinated and convalescent people (2G).