A low vaccination rate combined with a high incidence is pushing hospitals in Romania to their limit.
The descriptions of the staff are drastic.
Bucharest / Vienna - Romania is one of the EU-wide countries with the most dramatic corona situation.
Last week, none of the around 1,600 intensive care beds nationwide were free.
Even in the capital Bucharest, patients often wait for days in hospital corridors - and according to media reports, they only receive makeshift care there.
A current “Tagesschau” report on the pandemic in the country is shocking.
Because of overcrowded intensive care units, Romania is sending seriously ill Covid 19 patients to neighboring Hungary for treatment.
The 14-day incidence has been rising steeply for weeks and was most recently around 860. Only just under 35 percent of Romanians have full vaccination protection.
Critics accuse the government of not promoting vaccination enough.
The government, in turn, blames the anti-vaccination campaigns for the lack of willingness to vaccinate.
Corona in EU country Romania: "Many do not believe in the vaccine"
ARD correspondent Clemens Verenkotte reports that the ambulances in front of the emergency room at the university clinic in Bucharest hardly have any more space.
Many of the unvaccinated inmates had an explanation not to be vaccinated against Corona, he quotes a paramedic: "Many do not believe in the vaccine." Basically never.
Six out of ten Romanians oppose the vaccination, according to a poll published in early October, the report said.
In addition, there are no longer any corona restrictions.
"Since the beginning of the fourth corona wave, I have only had one vaccinated patient, all the others were not vaccinated," said a clinic employee.
Clinics collapse among corona patients: "We have nothing"
The Bucharest Medical Association recently alerted in an open letter: The doctors are desperate and the medical staff are exhausted.
"Now you can see for yourself what is happening here, what more can we say with words?" Said a doctor to Verenkotte.
"We even had 20 infected people on chairs here," added a colleague.
The poorer patients would have waited for them - for days: “We just don't know what to do with them anymore because nobody believes us.
We are only told that it is the same everywhere. "
All resources are exhausted, said the medical staff of the ARD.
You have patients who urgently need to be ventilated, but: "We no longer have any oxygen devices, we no longer have any free beds, we have nothing."
(Frs)
