Omicron wave: Up to 100 employees are absent from the Agatharied hospital every day

Created: 03/05/2022, 1:00 p.m

By: Sebastian Grauvogl

Struggling for normality: Agatharied Hospital is still suffering from the restrictions of the pandemic.

© Thomas PLETTENBERG

Since the beginning of the omicron wave, Agatharied Hospital has been struggling with staff shortages.

Up to 100 employees are absent every day.

But the business continues.

District

– It is usually the patients in a clinic who are ill.

Since the beginning of the omicron wave, the Agatharied hospital has also been struggling with health restrictions on the other side: among the staff.

Up to 100 employees are currently missing from work every day due to illness, reports the spokeswoman for the district hospital, Melanie Speicher, at the request of our newspaper.

Speicher emphasizes that these failures can only be compensated for by “enormous organizational effort and extraordinary commitment from everyone”.

This was the only way that operations could be maintained throughout, with the exception of isolated and short-term bed reductions or rescheduling in the operating room process.

"In view of the extent of the cases of illness, this actually borders on a miracle," says Speicher, and thanks the "incredible" employees of the hospital, "who tirelessly stand in for each other and stick together fantastically".

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Given that there are 1,200 employees in Agatharied, sick leave of less than ten percent may not appear dramatic at first glance.

"But you have to keep in mind that it often affects individual areas in bulk, which then has a different effect than ten percent in the statistics," says Speicher.

Changing duty rosters – especially in areas with three-shift operations – poses constant challenges for the workforce.

Isolation precautions still necessary

The clinic is also still struggling with the consequences of the pandemic on the patient side.

The still necessary isolation precautions for corona and suspected cases of infection would continue to shape everyday life.

After all, you can now occupy some of the four-bed rooms with three patients again – provided they are boosted and tested negative every day.

The number of Covid patients themselves has stabilized in the past few days, reports Speicher.

16 would be treated in the normal wards, one in the monitoring ward and one in the intensive care ward.

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According to the general decree of the state government, the so-called elective – i.e. not acutely necessary – operations would have to be postponed.

The background is to reserve capacities for emergency patients and treatments that cannot be postponed medically.

According to Speicher, the hospital is currently recording many injuries from skiing accidents.

However, this corresponds to the usual experience at this time of year.

Incidentally, the limiting factor in terms of occupancy is less the operating theater than the lack of beds, explains the spokeswoman.

A phenomenon that affects all stations equally, there are no abnormalities.

Hope for normalization in spring

When the Agatharied hospital can finally return to normal operations, Speicher is unable to say.

But: "We very much hope and are confident that this will be the case with the spring and the then rising temperatures." And there is another ray of hope: You can already see that the severity of the disease in Covid patients is not due to the vaccination progress more so high.

Nevertheless, as long as the incidence in the district does not drop significantly, one must continue to adhere to the current visit restrictions.

"To protect ongoing operations." Which is already on shaky ground for the reasons mentioned.

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