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Intensive care unit in the Rostock University Hospital: »The system is closer to a tipping point than I previously thought«
Photo: Jens Büttner / picture alliance / dpa
Christian Karagiannidis heads the intensive care unit of the lung clinic in Cologne-Merheim.
He knows what it means when there is a shortage of staff.
In view of the increasing number of infections, the doctor, who sits on the federal government’s Corona Expert Council, has now warned of massive staff shortages in the clinics.
"The staff situation in the intensive care units is extremely tense," said Karagiannidis, who is also the scientific director of the intensive care bed register of the DIVI specialist association, to the newspapers of the Funke media group.
"The system is closer to a tipping point than I previously thought."
Less operable intensive care beds
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) put the nationwide seven-day value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants on Saturday morning at a good 630 - a week earlier it was almost 450, in the previous month it was a good 280.
However, the incidence does not provide a complete picture of the infection situation: Experts assume that there are many unrecorded cases - mainly because many infected people no longer have a PCR test done, but only these tests count.
This blind flight could soon get worse: Despite the increasing numbers, free rapid corona tests will only be available for risk groups in the future.
For everyone else, according to plans by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), "citizen tests" will cost three euros in the future.
Around 580 of the 1,300 intensive care units nationwide reported significant staff shortages in mid-June, and there are now around 630. “In the past few years, we have never had as few operable high-care beds as we do now,” he said.
Until recently, the average across Germany was around 8,000, now it is still 7,500. It is to be expected that the situation will worsen further as the number of infections continues to rise and the number of staff lost accordingly.
In many places, such as at the six university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia, strikes are also affecting patient care: operations are cancelled, wards are closed.
apr/dpa