It is not a nice death to die from Corona, says Klaus Kienle.

"You don't dawn away, you suffocate miserably." The medical director of the Rottal-Inn clinics points to the painful end of a life-threatening illness as well as the year of birth of a seriously ill, unvaccinated patient: 2000. "Now the boys are here."

Karin Truscheit

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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And there are many more to come.

The clinic network, which includes three houses in Eggenfelden, Pfarrkirchen and Simbach in the Rottal-Inn district, is located in the district with the highest seven-day incidence in Bavaria - 1280.8 new infections, as of Tuesday.

Kienle expects that, given the dramatic numbers in Bavaria, everyone will have contact with the virus this winter.

How many of them end up in the hospital depends on the vaccination rate.

In Rottal-Inn it is 53.8, so much too low to counter the sweeping delta wave with anything worth mentioning.

The infections in the district are being driven up, also fueled by the proximity to the high incidence country of Austria.

That is the obvious explanation that the clinics have for the sad Bavarian record in their district.

The Bavarian mentality and the north-south divide

With serious effects: it was not until Friday that the hospital management had to organize an hour-long relocation campaign: 23 corona patients, four of them from intensive care units, had to be moved to other hospitals. They could no longer be adequately cared for in the Rottal-Inn clinics. According to the district office, the hospitals in the district were all still well positioned until two or three weeks ago, so that even patients from other regions were admitted. But since November 11, the disaster has been in force again in Bavaria, which, among other things, also regulates the transfer of patients. Michael Fahmüller (CSU), District Administrator of Rottal-Inn, was the first District Administrator to call for Bavaria to reintroduce this exceptional situation. That was on November 10th.There was exactly one free intensive care bed with ventilation capacity in the district. Due to the “dramatically high incidence”, the Rottal-Inn clinics are currently urgently looking for doctors and nurses for “any necessary support services” via Instagram.

Why the vaccination rate in Rottal-Inn is so low, the two board members of the clinics can only speculate: "It's a rural area, people don't live close together and therefore believe they are in a deceptive sense of security," says Gerhard Schlegl.

"Perhaps it is also the Bavarian Mia-san-mia mentality," adds Bernd Hirtreiter.

“There is a clear north-south divide in Germany for the vaccination quota.

Bremen has a quota of almost 80 percent. "

A "very lively anti-vaccination scene"

The district office also sees the low rate as the main reason for the rising numbers.

Spokesman Mathias Kempf refers to a "very lively anti-vaccination scene" on social media.

But there is also positive news: The willingness to vaccinate has recently increased significantly, the vaccination center has been restarted, and appointments have been re-established.

However, the Bundeswehr has to help again with the contact tracing of those who tested positive, and the health department quickly “reached the limit” again.

The employees are also “highly motivated” in the second Corona winter, trainees patiently dealt with people on the phone who abuse them because of the quarantine rules, says Kempf.

"And we manage to report all cases to the Robert Koch Institute on a daily basis."