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Corona crisis in the district: Authority at the limit - "Lost the overview"

2021-11-04T18:07:05.434Z


The number of corona cases in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district is skyrocketing. Medical officer Kübler: "We lost the overview."


The number of corona cases in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district is skyrocketing.

Medical officer Kübler: "We lost the overview."

District

- It is the day of sad records: the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 299.1 yesterday, Thursday, as the new high for the seven-day incidence since the beginning of the pandemic.

As if that weren't enough bad news, the health department added in the afternoon: 128 new infections in one day - "we've never had that before," states Stephan Scharf, press spokesman in the district office, dismayed.

The corona crisis in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district has reached a new high point - and the trend is rising.

Medical officer Dr.

Karin Kübler has long since made no secret: “We are going under,” says the head of the local health authority.

"We no longer have an overview, that cannot be glossed over either."

"We are at the limit, but not over yet"

Dr.

Martin Dotzer

Dr. Martin Dotzer is currently still out. “We are at the limit, but not over yet,” he sums up for the clinics in the three districts of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Weilheim-Schongau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Based in the Murnau Accident Clinic, he coordinates the corona issues of the hospitals in this special-purpose association. He definitely values ​​the “still”. Because he also knows: “The occupancy in normal and intensive care units is increasing continuously. And since we are always lagging a little behind the current number of hospitalizations, we will certainly have an even higher influx in the next few weeks. ”Thursday morning there were a total of four free intensive care beds in the three districts - out of 90 available. "It's difficult to do that." Accepting corona patients from outside,for example from the extremely affected regions such as Miesbach or Rosenheim, those responsible have already stopped.

Kübler and her colleagues in the fight against pandemics do not deal with such topics.

They plague completely different worries - very big ones.

"We have exponential growth, a considerable backlog in data collection, contact persons can hardly be identified any more, even contact with infected persons is only possible with a delay." All in all: the situation is messed up.

The core problem lies with the staff: there is a lack of front and rear

The core problem lies with the staff. It is missing in the back and front. 16 permanent employees and seven specialists from other departments or offices currently make up the Contact Tracing Team (CTT). "That is a third to a maximum of half of what we had in the peak phase last year," complains Kübler. At that time, up to 70 people took care of the handling of the case volume. “And at that time we had a lockdown, so that was a completely different situation.” This made it even easier to determine infection chains and contacts. "Now we can actually no longer dwell on individual cases."

Prioritizing is the order of the day.

Not nice.

“But there is no other way.

The work cannot be done with the limited staff. ”Once again, the focus has shifted to the vulnerable groups, ie the weakest links in the population: senior citizens in nursing homes or patients in clinics.

Very annoying for Kübler: Especially in the hospitals “there are mainly unvaccinated people”.

Dotzer confirms this: "More than 90 percent."

Positive cases in schools and kindergartens can hardly be adequately followed up at the moment

The bland aftertaste from Kübler's point of view: positive cases in schools and kindergartens can hardly be adequately followed up at the moment. "We can no longer do that because this area is also very complex, labor-intensive." The only positive: "As a rule, the children still do not have any difficult courses." infections since the beginning of school. “There we have an increased number of cases,” confirms the medical officer, “but the tests are also prescribed there by prescription.” This makes it easier to find positive cases.

Such an extensive test procedure is now missing for the rest of the population, even if politicians are currently turning the 3G screws again, the corona rules are due to be tightened in Bavaria from Saturday because more than 450 intensive care beds are occupied across Bavaria.

3G then becomes 3G-plus (recovered, vaccinated, tested with PCR), from 3G-plus it goes up to 2G (only recovered and vaccinated).

Everything comes very late in Dotzer's eyes.

Because until these measures take effect, "it takes three to four weeks".

Testing is still the greatest help

Kübler continues to rely on testing as the greatest help. Therefore, she has also ordered for the state center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen that symptomatic people can continue to be tested in the facility - contrary to an instruction from Munich, which says that people with symptoms of the disease should go to the general practitioner. “But they are also overloaded and especially not there on weekends,” says Kübler. "We have always tested them and will continue to do so." The head of the office relies on figures: "Of 4500 cases that we registered by the beginning of the week, 3000 were detected in the center."

In order to get the situation under control, she also sent a request for help to the Bundeswehr on Thursday.

She strengthened the team last autumn and winter.

“The necessary steps have been initiated,” affirmed Scharf.

"We will certainly be able to increase internally quite quickly, but we don't know how quickly that can be done with external staff."

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-11-04

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