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Artificially ventilated patient (symbol image)
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / imago images / Olaf Döring
The number of vaccinated people in the German intensive care units has risen, the Funke media group reported on Tuesday.
The news caused a stir: won't the vaccination bring anything then?
But vaccination breakthroughs can be expected, because even a full vaccination does not protect 100 percent against infection - the higher the vaccination rate, the higher the number of those who become infected with the virus despite being vaccinated.
In the vast majority of cases, breakthrough vaccination is comparatively harmless. The President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi) has now classified which patients are in the intensive care unit despite a complete vaccination with severe courses. "The vaccinated minority largely consists of older patients whose second vaccination was a long time ago," said Gernot Marx to the editorial network Germany (RND). "These people usually also suffer from serious chronic diseases." Most patients in the corona intensive care unit, however, are not vaccinated at all or not fully vaccinated.
This is also evident from figures from the Federal Ministry of Health, according to which around nine out of ten corona intensive care patients treated in August and September were not fully vaccinated.
Situation under control, but no relaxation
Divi-President Marx described the capacities for free beds in the intensive care units as currently relatively stable.
»At the moment we are in a plateau phase, we are stagnating with around 1,300 Covid intensive care patients.
The situation is under control, ”he said.
"We are now able to act and have an average of two free intensive care beds per location."
But there could be no talk of relaxation.
Furthermore, Covid-19 is a great burden for intensive care medicine.
The situation in the intensive care units is meanwhile "no longer always and primarily determined by Corona," said Marx.
"We are in a very open situation, forecasts for the coming months are hardly possible."
The health authorities reported 11,903 new corona infections within one day to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
The seven-day incidence on Wednesday was 65.4.
The number of corona patients admitted to clinics per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days - the most important parameter for a possible tightening of the corona restrictions - gave the RKI on Tuesday 1.70
(Monday: 1.58).
A nationwide threshold, from when the situation can be viewed critically, is for the
Incidence of hospitalization not envisaged, partly because of large regional differences.
The previous high was around 15.5 around Christmas time.
According to official information, the vaccination rate for adults in Germany is around 75 percent.
According to a report on an RKI vaccination survey that appeared last week, however, probably more people are vaccinated in this country than the data from the reporting system suggest.
It said that the rate for once and fully vaccinated people aged 18 and over could be up to five percentage points higher.
As early as August, the RKI reported a "certain uncertainty" in the interpretation of vaccination rate data.
Drosten considers excitement about vaccination quota for slapstick
The RKI cites various explanations for this, including the fact that people who are not very ready to be vaccinated are underrepresented in the surveys. In addition, the RKI states that people with poor knowledge of German cannot take part in the survey. "There is a presumption that language barriers also lead to less use of the Covid-19 vaccination." In addition, certain vaccinations are not even recorded in the statistics.
The Berlin virologist Christian Drosten described the discrepancy in the vaccination rates and the associated public excitement as "slapstick" and completely in vain.
You have to reckon with the vaccination rate of the total population (and not of adults), said Drosten: The difference between the reporting system and the RKI accompanying examination is small and "irrelevant" for the assessment of the overall situation.
The accompanying study, a survey, also has some limitations.
kry / dpa
