Situation in the hospitals threatening! “Real emergency situation” in many hospitals – President of intensive care physicians worried!
The dramatic numbers of the last days and weeks are not only reflected on paper but now also arrive in reality! The president of the intensive care doctors now sounds the alarm and speaks of a “real emergency situation”!
Measures will be further tightened!
Intensive care physician President Gernot Marx has called on the federal and state governments to tighten anti-corona measures because of a “real emergency situation” in many clinics. In Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria, the situation is “already very, very tense” because of the sharp increase in the number of intensive care patients, the president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi) told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” newspaper on Saturday. He added that the Charité hospital in the Berlin conurbation had already cancelled all operations that could be planned.
“This is a real emergency situation. Because of the experience of the previous waves, we firmly expect that soon patients will have to be transferred again from Corona hotspots to clinics outside,” Marx told the newspaper. “We’re already in a more critical phase because we have 4,000 fewer intensive care beds to occupy than we did a year ago due to exhausted and burned-out nurses who have quit their jobs or reduced their hours.” For all those working in intensive care, this is an “extreme situation” right now.
Situation must be addressed swiftly
Marx demanded from politicians “very quickly clear and appropriate to the situation decisions, and for nationwide uniform rules.” Also necessary was a clear communication of the decisions and an end to the permanent quarrels, “so that what has been decided is also implemented and adhered to”, he told the “Neue Osnabrücker”.
The Divi president does not fear that not all seriously ill patients will be able to be fully treated: “The fact that we can only treat one patient out of two and not the other will not happen in Germany – that is, really in the sense that we would have to decide on life and death,” he assured. Even in the fourth wave, “I don’t see the danger of triage.” However, countless scheduled interventions, for example heart operations, would possibly have to be postponed for months. That causes a lot of suffering, Marx said.