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Corona patient in an intensive care unit at the University Clinic Essen: five nurses or carers for only one ventilated Covid-19 patient
Photo:
Fabian Strauch / dpa
In some neighboring countries of Germany, intensive care beds are already in short supply, and not everyone infected with corona can rely on intensive medical treatment in their home country.
In order to delay a possible bottleneck in hospital capacities in Germany for as long as possible, the federal and state governments have now developed a concept based on the so-called "clover leaf principle".
"If a situation develops that makes it necessary to move beyond neighboring countries or regions, a so-called cloverleaf principle applies," says the plan of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which is available to the newspapers of the Funke media group.
The federal and state governments therefore want to distribute intensive care patients suffering from Covid-19 between the federal states in the future if capacities are scarce - despite potentially long transport routes.
The first German clinics are already warning of overload
A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior told the dpa news agency about the plans: "Clear structures and processes, medical-specialist advice and the bundling of transport resources ensure that in the event of an imminent or actual regional overload of intensive care capacities, compensation within Germany is managed even under complex framework conditions can be."
In the past few days, the first German clinics had sounded the alarm and warned of an imminent overload.
With new contact bans and closings of entire industries, politicians are trying to get the infection rates under control again in November.
Regarding the planned intensive care concept, the chairwoman of the conference of health ministers, Berlin Senator for Health Dilek Kalayci, told the Funke newspapers: "For this purpose, Germany is divided into five regions, which inform themselves about the utilization of clinical capacities both within the regions and between the regions make free clinical capacities available if necessary. "
According to the SPD politician, if a federal state or region shows signs of heavy strain or even an overload, "the supraregional patient transport to receptive regions will be organized via centrally established offices in the regions".
To this end,
Hamburg
,
Bremen
,
Lower Saxony
,
Schleswig-Holstein
and
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
have joined forces in the north
, as the Funke newspapers report, citing the concept.
In the east there are
Berlin
,
Brandenburg
,
Saxony
,
Saxony-Anhalt
and
Thuringia
.
In the southwest,
Hesse
,
Baden-Württemberg
,
Rhineland-Palatinate
and
Saarland are
to support each other.
The most populous federal states of
North Rhine-Westphalia
and
Bavaria
form their own regions.
Through this division, patients should receive the best possible medical care even when the clinics are under heavy strain.
As a ministry spokesman explained, the federal and state governments are able to start the concept at any time.
The German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (Divi) already maintains a register that shows the number of vacant intensive care beds nationwide on a daily basis.
This should also enable a transfer from heavily used clinics to houses with capacities.
The intensive care beds should be calculated with the necessary nursing staff.
The bed capacity alone is not decisive, however: a ventilated Covid 19 patient alone needs up to five nurses or carers.
But they are particularly lacking.
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apr / dpa / AFP