Specialists in Germany are also preparing for the fact that intensive care beds are becoming scarce. A catalog with the following recommendations for action is now becoming essential.
- Currently, 84,794 reported coronavirus infections in Germany alone are worrying authorities and citizens.
- Initial restrictions are intended to prevent the pandemic from continuing to spread rapidly.
- However, a flattening of the infection curve is currently not foreseeable, on the contrary.
- Doctors are expecting many Covid 19 patients to be treated in clinics in the coming days and weeks.
As reported by the Tagesschau, Covid-19 is relatively easy in 80 percent of those infected, difficult in around 15 percent and critical in another five percent. If the pandemic continues to spread undisturbed, there could be millions of serious or even critical illnesses * across Germany. The German health care system is better positioned than that of many other European countries - but here too there are only around 28,000 intensive care beds available for the treatment of coronavirus patients . There is reason for doctors to assume that - as in Italy - they will have to make life and death decisions as the pandemic progresses.
When triage is used: Not every coronavirus patient can be treated
A heavy burden that should be regulated by a new catalog of measures. Seven medical associations formulated the procedures that doctors should use in the event of a disaster - in other words, in the event that the intensive care capacities are insufficient due to too many Covid 19 patients *.
View measures catalog here
"If it is no longer possible to admit all critically ill patients to the intensive care unit, the triage in disaster medicine must be used to decide on the distribution of the limited resources available," says the recommendations for action: "The prioritization of patients should therefore be based on the criterion of orient the clinical prospect of success, which does not mean a decision in the sense of the 'best choice', but rather the renunciation of treatment for those who have little or no prospect of success ".
Should there be a shortage of intensive care medical devices, the doctors on site would first have to decide who could be saved, quotes the medical journal Christiane Woopen, medical ethicist and chair of the European Ethics Council. From this group, those would be selected who particularly need a ventilator. "However, if two patients need urgent ventilation, but there is only one device, the one who has the better chance of surviving should get it - a difficult decision," said Woopen.
Read also : Coronavirus in Germany - Merkel warns: "Avoid social contacts where possible" .
"Insufficient intensive care resources for all patients are no longer available"
Triage is used in this case: a system that originally comes from military medicine. The term stands for the classification of patients according to the severity of their injuries. This classification should be used in decisions about intensive care treatments during the current coronavirus pandemic, since according to the publication it is "likely (that) that in Germany in a short time and despite increases in capacity that have already taken place, sufficient intensive care resources will no longer be available for all patients Are available who need them ". However, clear recommendations for action could relieve the teams and at the same time strengthen public confidence in the crisis management of hospitals, as the zdf quotes from the catalog of measures.
War-like conditions in the field of medical care already exist in other European countries such as Italy and Spain due to the coronavirus pandemic. In Germany, the government wants to curb the waves of infection with stricter exit restrictions, border controls, the closing of restaurants, schools and shops that are not important for everyday life, as well as a ban on visits to old people's homes and similar facilities, so that the health system is not overloaded.
Read more : Medicines against Covid-19: Clinic in Austria with "cautiously good news".
Sources : www.tagesschau.de; www.zdf.de; www.aerzteblatt.de
jg
How do I become an emergency medic?
To the photo gallery
* Merkur.de belongs to the Germany-wide Ippen-Digital editors network .
List of rubric lists: © picture alliance / dpa / Marcel Kusch