Doctor Çelik, you are senior physician in the isolation ward for Covid-19 patients at the Darmstadt Clinic; we talk regularly about the state of affairs. How is the situation right now?
We can finally speak of a single number again at the ward: on Monday we were able to reduce the normal Covid ward area to one ward.
We had previously had a plateau since February, two normal wards were fully occupied with Covid patients.
We have already had certain fluctuations in the past few weeks: in the meantime, the number of cases has decreased.
But as a maximum care provider, we had to take in more patients again when smaller hospitals reduced their Covid wards.
In the past two weeks, however, the number of cases has dropped significantly, so that we were finally able to withdraw to a focus Covid station.
The suspected area is still outsourced, I hope that we will soon be able to consolidate it into one ward.
What kind of patients do you see?
The average age of our patients has continued to rise since our last conversation at the beginning of April.
It is striking that unvaccinated patients are on average younger and that fortunately there are very few in the older age groups who are not vaccinated.
There are hardly any restrictions now. Where are the patients infected?
Most do not know where they got infected.
We know that in phases of high incidence, the virus is everywhere and it is not at all possible to trace a chain of infection - especially since everything is open again.
In the clinic, too, we do not have absolute control over chains of infection, which is why it is important that the vaccination rate is high and that our staff is protected from serious illnesses.
In order to reduce the risk for our vulnerable patients, we continue to carry out series of tests.
Patients without symptoms and without prior suspicion also happen to be conspicuous with a positive PCR test, who then come to us on the ward.
In the past week, half of the patients in our Covid ward consisted of clinic patients who were still negative when admitted to the clinic,
but are positive a few days later in the series test.
Sometimes with, sometimes without symptoms, but most of them have a mild course thanks to vaccination and milder variants.
In some places you have the feeling that the pandemic is over. Are we in danger of losing sight of the danger posed by the virus?
There are different answers to this question.
Many people continue to die from a corona infection every day, even if the number of deaths has decoupled to a large extent from the number of cases.
Yet these are human lives that are lost every day.
This is a price that we as a society are apparently willing to pay at the moment.
But this is an open discussion, we saw this point coming months ago.
Another point is: We have always been most successful in fighting a pandemic when we have prepared.
But the scenarios currently circulating, which may threaten us in autumn and winter, are sometimes speculative and nothing concrete yet.
It's always difficult to explain to people why we still have to take the virus very seriously.
I have to trust that we
How do you deal with this discrepancy in the clinic, that life has picked up speed outside while you continue to treat patients?
I think just this week is a good example of that.
In the past few weeks, we have experienced this paradoxical situation much more intensely when everything outside was the same as it used to be and we still had two fully occupied wards with Covid patients here.
Now that there are fewer Covid patients in our ward, we can also feel this feeling of relief.
We are also looking forward to more social interaction - of course with the knowledge that a dangerous virus is still circulating.
But you don't have to deny or negate this danger in order to be able to meet people again and pursue leisure activities.
You can even appreciate a lot more what is possible again.
And it must also be said that the vast majority of people, especially younger people, are well protected in the current phase of the pandemic.