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Intensive care unit in Bavaria (symbol image)
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
For weeks there have been reminders that the growing number of severe Covid courses could overload the intensive care units in particularly affected areas.
Now Bavaria and four other federal states have officially activated the so-called cloverleaf concept for the strategic transfer of intensive care patients against the background of increasing occupancy.
As the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (Divi) announced on Tuesday evening, a "larger number" of patients from Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, Berlin and Brandenburg will be relocated to other "clover-leaf regions" over the next few days.
The so-called cloverleaf concept was developed during the corona pandemic in order to facilitate the distribution of patients when there was a high regional occupancy rate in the intensive care units.
The 16 federal states are divided into five groups - the North, East, South, Southwest and West clovers.
Bavaria forms the clover leaf south, the states of Thuringia, Saxony, Berlin and Brandenburg are in the clover leaf east.
The steering group that coordinates the relocations will meet on Wednesday, said a Divi spokeswoman for the AFP news agency in the evening.
It should also be clarified with which means of transport the affected patients would be transferred.
Saxony's incidence is approaching 1000
In the east and south of Germany, the seven-day incidence of corona infections is currently particularly high.
It was highest on Tuesday in Saxony with 969.9, followed by Thuringia with 685.3 and Bavaria with 644.9.
Some counties in these federal states have incidences over a thousand.
The seven-day incidence indicates the number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants within a week.
Nationwide, it was recently just below the 400 mark, and the official death toll from the virus in Germany is likely to rise to over 100,000 in the coming days.
jok / AFP
