The situation in Belgium's intensive care units is tense - Germany has been asked to admit corona patients.
Nevertheless, the government is sticking to the planned openings in May.
Brussels - The employees in the intensive care units are exhausted and give "130 percent", explained Marcel Van der Auwera.
But they would have to hold out even longer, because the tense situation in the hospitals will continue for "two or three weeks", the head of emergency medical assistance told the Belga news agency.
Corona in Belgium: Authority warns of overload - and asks Germany for help
The Belgian Ministry of Health warned last Friday (April 23) that the intensive care units in the neighboring country would be overloaded with a view to the third wave of the corona pandemic.
Around 900 of the 2000 intensive care beds in Belgium are therefore occupied with Covid 19 patients.
Some hospital locations no longer have intensive care beds available.
This makes it difficult in some places to treat other emergencies, such as accident victims or patients with heart attacks.
On Friday there were only 82 free intensive care beds in Belgium for such cases, said Van der Auwera.
Belgium therefore asked Germany to accept Belgian corona patients, the official said.
According to information from the dpa, those affected could be transferred to hospitals in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Covid 19 patients from Belgium had already been treated in Germany during the second corona wave last November.
Corona in Belgium: Government continues to stick to opening plans
Despite the tense situation in the hospitals, the Belgian government around Prime Minister Alexander De Croo is sticking to the planned easing of the corona lockdown. These should come into force on May 8th. Restaurants and cafés can then open their outdoor areas again, with up to four guests at one table. De Croo reaffirmed this on Friday. The easing is possible because the corona vaccination campaign in Belgium is progressing better “than expected”.
In total, around 2.7 million of the around 11.5 million inhabitants in Belgium have so far been vaccinated against the coronavirus at least once.
According to official information from Monday morning, there were 435.7 corona cases per 100,000 inhabitants in Germany's neighboring country in the past 14 days.
On average, there have been almost 3,600 new infections every day in Belgium in the past two weeks.
In addition, there were an average of 39 deaths every day.
The corona situation is also tense in Germany.
On Monday morning (April 26), the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 11,907 new corona infections and a nationwide 7-day incidence of 169.3.
In the afternoon there will be a vaccination summit with Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the prime ministers of the federal states.
(ph / afp / dpa)