Sunday 21 November 2021
“Hundreds Realistic”
Greens: Prepare to move patients
It could soon be the case that hundreds of patients have to be relocated because German clinics have reached their limits. Health expert Dahmen from the Greens therefore demands a federal-state crisis team that organizes the “show of strength” centrally – above all in good time.
The Green health expert Janosch Dahmen is calling for comprehensive preparations for patient transfers to other clinics due to the sustained sharp increase in corona infections. This is “a coordinative effort” that should be controlled early and centrally, said the member of the Bundestag. “It is quite realistic that hundreds of patients will have to be transferred shortly.” For this challenge, an operational federal-state crisis team is finally needed, which should have been in place since the beginning of the pandemic.
“As early as next week, numerous intensive care units will no longer be able to accept new patients,” warned Dahmen. In the south and east of the country, the supply capacities will not be sufficient for the foreseeable future. “Since we know that around 0.7 percent of all newly infected people will end up in the intensive care unit, we can already reliably predict the need for intensive care beds for the next ten days.” Therefore, the international coordination and the logistical organization of patient distribution must now be started. “We can only do this centrally and not by unloading it on shoulders that are already overloaded.”
At the beginning there must be the question of how many intensive care beds are already needed in the foreseeable future – and where in Germany there is still a correspondingly large number of free beds. “In overcrowded clinics it must now be determined which patients are medically eligible for a transfer,” said Dahmen. In addition, patient data would have to be transmitted to the receiving clinics.
The Greens expert criticized that the hospitalization rate chosen by the federal and state governments was unsuitable as a central benchmark for the current crisis management. “This indicator does not permit early action, only late reaction.” In the chain of events after an infection, hospital admission is the last factor. In addition, it has been shown that the hospitalization rate had to be constantly corrected retrospectively due to late registrations. The current value is clearly too low and therefore very unreliable. The seven-day incidence and the availability and occupancy of intensive care beds continue to make the most sense as headline indicators.
The federal and state governments had agreed 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. Based on this, there should be three levels, each with further restrictions – including nationwide access rules only for vaccinated and convalescent people (2G). Dahmen said it was incomprehensible that federal states such as the Union-led Saxony-Anhalt still did not implement measures such as 2G plus (additionally with test) and consequent contact restrictions that were required by the federal-state group.