Massive shortage of staff in intensive care units is imminent – doctors see “the system is closer to the tipping point”
Created: 06/26/2022, 16:59
By: Kai Hartwig
Germany's intensive care units are heading towards overload again due to the increasing number of corona.
An expert fears a staff shortage.
Berlin – Since the beginning of the corona pandemic in early 2020, the staff in Germany’s intensive care units have had a lot of work.
In the hospitals, the medical staff did almost inhumane things, and many patients found the clinics understaffed.
The doctors and nurses were only able to take a deep breath when the corona situation eased.
Corona in Germany: Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 cause numbers to rise - "Staff situation in intensive care units tense"
But the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 caused the number of corona infections to skyrocket again in June.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach sees Germany in the middle of the summer wave.
This development makes intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis thoughtful.
The member of the Federal Government’s Corona Expert Council has now warned that there could be massive staff shortages in the clinics.
"The staff situation in the intensive care units is extremely tense," Karagiannidis told the newspapers of the
Funke media group
: "The system is closer to a tipping point than I previously thought." By mid-June, almost 580 of the 1,300 intensive care units nationwide were already there Significant staff shortages reported.
Shortly before the end of the month there were even around 630.
Germany's intensive care units are again threatened with a staff shortage.
(Iconic image) © Jens Büttner/dpa
DIVI boss Karagiannidis warns: "Never before have there been so few operable high-care beds available as at present"
"In the past few years, we have never had as few operable high-care beds as we currently have," said the scientific director of the intensive care bed register of the DIVI association.
According to Karagiannidis, the nationwide average was around 8,000 until a while ago.
It is now only 7,500, explained Karagiannidis.
The doctor expects the situation to deteriorate further due to the further increase in the number of corona infections and the resulting increase in staff shortages.
On Sunday morning (June 26), the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the nationwide seven-day incidence of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants as 605.9.
However, experts assume that a large number of corona cases are not recorded.
Accordingly, many infected people no longer have a PCR test done.
Accordingly, the incidence value is not suitable for drawing a complete picture of the infection situation.
Meanwhile, from July, the rapid corona tests will no longer be offered free of charge as before.
(kh)