Because of the increasing Omikron infection rates, hospital staff is becoming scarce in many European countries.
Although the rapidly spreading variant of the coronavirus is said to trigger less severe symptoms of the disease, the health systems in countries such as Spain, Italy and the UK are facing major problems.
According to British experts, more people still have to be treated, but at the same time en masse doctors and nurses are in quarantine or infected.
Operations that are not urgently needed are being postponed in many places.
In Germany, too, there is growing concern about the health system being overloaded.
The current measures are not sufficient to contain the Omikron wave, warned the Green health politician Janosch Dahmen on Monday.
"With Omikron, we have to treat more patients but have fewer staff available," said Stephen Powis, medical director for the NHS.
In Great Britain, under pressure from the government, in the next three months private hospitals and medical practices are to carry out cancer operations that were actually supposed to be done in state NHS clinics.
In Spain, carers are being brought back from retirement
Omikron is currently spreading at breakneck speed in Great Britain, and the government around Prime Minister Boris Johnson has so far waived any new restrictions on public life. At some point, the health system will be able to live with Covid-19 and withstand the pressure, said British Minister Michael Gove. “But we are absolutely not ready yet. There are still a few difficult weeks ahead of us. "
In Spain, the personnel situation in hospitals is so tight that nursing staff are being pulled back from retirement. The authorities also said that the contact tracking in the health authorities could no longer be sufficiently carried out. According to a newspaper report, Spain wants to follow up infections less strictly in the future, test less and proceed as with classic flu infections. Since the death rates for corona diseases have fallen, it could be time to deal with the pandemic in other ways, said the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez the broadcaster SER.
In the Netherlands, hospitals are considering letting people with symptom-free corona infection continue to work.
At the Amsterdam University Clinic, every fourth employee had recently tested positive, it said there.
A week ago, the positive rate was five percent.
In Italy, the situation is tense anyway, with around four percent of hospital workers being suspended from work because they are not vaccinated.
The health authorities there are therefore urging that unnecessary operations be postponed.
Nursing staff and doctors sometimes have to postpone their vacations.