In the years before Corona, employees in hospitals lay flat with a virus once a year, according to intensive care physician Karagiannidis. Several severe waves of infection are currently running through the staff. He warns: The failures can no longer be compensated.
Intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis has warned of restrictions on regular hospital care in view of the numerous staff shortages in the clinics. “Our main problem in the healthcare system is currently the wide range of staff shortages and the associated bed closures,” said Karagiannidis, who is a member of the federal government’s Corona Expert Council, of the “Rheinische Post”.
This applies to a chronically ill system that no longer has any possibility of compensation. “Before Corona, many employees lay in bed once a year after carnival with a virus, the flu. Currently, several severe waves of infection are running through the staff at short intervals, and we fear that Corona will also be joined by the flu,” said Karagiannidis.
This leads to considerable restrictions and, among other things, to the fact that the number of intensive care beds that can be operated with staff is currently the lowest because the failures can no longer be compensated for. “If the number of patients increases significantly in winter, the system will come under an extremely heavy load. I cannot imagine that this will happen without restricting regular care,” said Karagiannidis.
Meanwhile, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) last gave the nationwide seven-day incidence on Saturday morning at 436.4. The day before, the value of new corona infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week was 464.1 (previous week: 625.1; previous month: 409.9). However, this information only provides a very incomplete picture of the number of infections.
Experts have been assuming for some time that there will be a large number of cases not recorded by the RKI – mainly because not all infected people have a PCR test done. Only positive PCR tests count in the statistics. In addition, late registrations or transmission problems can lead to a distortion of individual daily values.