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Intensive care physicians are calling for a hard lockdown for two or three weeks in view of the rising corona numbers.

"This will save numerous human lives and protect even more from lifelong long-term consequences of Covid," said the President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI), Gernot Marx, on Sunday.

He warned: "We run into perdition with our eyesight."

According to the DIVI intensive care register, there are still 1644 beds available in intensive care units for corona patients across Germany.

The association announced that the number of Covid-19 intensive care patients had jumped from 2727 to 3448 since March 10.

"This number will continue to grow exponentially over the next two and a half weeks, no matter what we do now," said Christian Karagiannidis, the medical and scientific director of the DIVI intensive care registry.

With more than 5000 Covid-19 patients, it is getting really critical.

"That means something has to happen now."

His colleague Steffen Weber-Carstens said that between Christmas and the beginning of January the population did not even notice how tight it was.

Numerous patients were flown north from east or central Germany.

This week he had already received inquiries about national relocations.

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There is no way around a hard lockdown for two to three weeks, according to Karagiannidis.

“The only question is when it will be triggered.” Except for more than 4500 patients in the intensive care units, it will definitely go up again.

"If a hard lockdown is then decided, we will manage to lower the curve again at just over 5000." But if you wait longer, more than 6000 people with Covid-19 would be in the intensive care units.

"I doubt whether we can do it," said the intensive care doctor.

DIVI President Marx called for a hard lockdown over the Easter holidays.

"And then we can go back to public life at significantly lower incidences with rapid tests, PCR tests, vaccinations and apps," he explained.

Every patient who does not have to go to the intensive care unit is worth the effort.

“Our patients are marked for life,” he emphasized.