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Michaela Stern, director of the St. Franziskus retirement home in Munich: "We are already at the limit"
Photo: Florian Generotzky / DER SPIEGEL
For three weeks now, the Protestant residential monastery in Raadt, a district of Mülheim an der Ruhr, has been practically cut off from the outside world.
"Quarantine, unfortunately no visits are possible at the moment" is written on a sign on the entrance door.
In addition, the order of the health department depends: Those who oppose the measures face a prison sentence of up to two years.
The situation is "devastating," says the head of the facility, Andreas Rost.
Of the good 100 residents of his monastery, 58 were infected with Sars-CoV-2, 7 of them died.
22 employees also tested positive.
And the nurses who are still on duty, reports Rost, "are on the verge of their limits".
It is just like in Mülheim in many places.
In Germany, there are increasing reports from old people's homes in which the virus has caught large parts of the residents, but also the staff.
The fact that the situation, as the head of the Robert Koch Institute Lothar Wieler put it, is so serious, "as it has never been in this pandemic," is due to a large extent to the infection process in those houses.
While outbreaks are now less frequent in clinics, they continue to have a strong impact in care facilities.
In Berlin, for example, more than 50 percent of all corona deaths result from an infection in a nursing home.
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