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?

Julia Anton

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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In our ward, the last week and a half have shown that the pandemic is not over yet.

At the end of the summer wave we had 21 Covid patients in the house.

Now the number has risen to over 70 within a week and a half, despite many layoffs and transfers.

We did not expect this rapid increase.

We again had to vacate a second ward after our Covid focus normal ward had previously made do with one ward for more than two months.

As a result, interventions and operations have to be canceled again.

In addition: Due to the lack of nursing staff, we have to withdraw them from other wards for Covid care;

there the beds have to be reduced.

What kind of patients are you seeing right now?

In fact, about half are being treated not for, but with, Covid.

They can then be isolated and cared for in their home department.

The other half were brought in with respiratory complaints, a high-risk profile or even a severe course and are being cared for in our normal Covid ward.

The majority of these patients are older than 70, only basic immunization and clearly pre-existing.

Covid is making sick and elderly people in particular even sicker, they are the norm in our ward.

It rarely happens that a young, healthy person has to be looked after by us.

Of the symptomatic cases, about 20 percent were unvaccinated, although they represent less than 5 percent of the population in the 70+ age group.

How do you measure who is being treated with or for Covid?

Usually this cannot be answered clearly.

This is a desired side effect of the vaccination: because we see much less severe Covid pneumonia or pulmonary embolism, which was a clear “because of”.

This is often not a yes or no question, but rather a scale of how much part the Covid disease has in the current hospitalization.

The following applies to most of our patients on the Covid normal ward: without Covid they probably would not be with us.

I am currently noticing that this topic is being shortened inadmissibly.

It sounds positive if the "With Covid" share accounts for half.

Nevertheless, we have one and a half occupied normal wards, mainly with high-risk patients over the age of 70, who almost all need oxygen and are in a very bad condition, not only due to Covid.

The fact that so many patients were admitted at the same time puts our regular hospital operations in trouble.

I believe that this acute problem is not yet on the screen.

The country assigns us a number of how many Covid patients we have to take care of.

But this number is currently half as high as we actually serve.

We are currently expanding the medical care in the late shift and on the weekends.

How do you explain the sudden increase?