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Clinics in the corona crisis: "The most severe intensive care patients cannot be transferred"

2021-12-02T17:49:12.405Z


Hospitals are increasingly overloaded, so Covid patients are being relocated within Germany with the help of the Air Force. It still works, coordinated according to the “cloverleaf principle”. But how much longer?


Read the video transcript here

Targeted relief is the order of the day.

The University Hospital Bonn admitted a corona intensive care patient from Dresden on Wednesday.

He was flown from Saxony to North Rhine-Westphalia in an Air Force Medevac aircraft.

Christian Strassburg, Director of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Bonn:

“The situation is tense overall, but it can be resolved at the moment.

That means that we care for all patients who are entrusted to us.

(...) We found a gap that we can take on a patient today, and we realized that. "

More than 80 patients have already been moved within Germany so that the intensive care units do not overflow, especially in corona hotspots.

A good week ago, several federal states activated the so-called cloverleaf concept. Each federal state belongs to one of the five “clovers”, each of which is coordinated at a central point.

Some of the relocations are carried out with special Air Force machines that have been converted into flying intensive care units.

The effort for the laying is immense.

Christian Strassburg, Director of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Bonn:

“You must have a realistic chance without the patient being endangered to an appropriate extent, that he will be relocated in such a way that he can continue to receive good treatment.

This means that the most severe intensive care patients cannot be transferred.

That is always a consideration.

It's not an easy decision either.

But of course, according to the attending physicians, only those are relocated where there is a chance of success. "

According to the Divi Intensive Care Register, there are currently around 4700 Covid 19 patients in intensive care units in Germany.

Due to an acute shortage of staff, the clinics can operate around 4,000 fewer intensive care beds than a year ago.

Divi President Gernot Marx fears up to 6000 intensive care patients at the same time by Christmas - regardless of the Corona measures that politicians are now deciding.

He sees only one way to prevent such bottlenecks in the future.

Gernot Marx, President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi):

“We've changed our minds about vaccination.

We were also always in favor of voluntary action, but the vaccinations ultimately did not lead to the necessary result voluntarily.

We just have to admit that.

But the mandatory vaccination or the high vaccination quota is a prerequisite for us to flatten this wave and above all to prevent the fifth and sixth waves, if not completely, but at least so that they become small and we are not in the same situation in one Year. "

People who have been vaccinated have a significantly lower risk of contracting Covid-19.

More importantly, only a few of them require intensive medical care.

Nevertheless, the doctors try to help every patient as much as possible.

Christian Strassburg, Director of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Bonn:

“The fact is that no differences are made here from patient to patient.

A patient who needs intensive treatment receives it and there is no check to see whether he is vaccinated or not. "

This is how the transfers of intensive care patients are coordinated thanks to the cloverleaf principle: The redistribution of patients will also soon reach its limits.

The number of new infections, and thus also those seriously ill, must therefore decrease rapidly and significantly.

Source: spiegel

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