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Hamburg (dpa / lno) - Due to the increased number of corona intensive care patients, the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) is currently postponing around 40 non-urgent operations per day.
That is about every third intervention of this kind, said a spokeswoman.
These include obesity operations, the treatment of hernias, jaw misalignments or operations for benign diagnoses such as thyroid dysfunction.
Some of the outpatient appointments have to be postponed at the moment.
"The UKE is reacting to the dynamic and serious situation," the spokeswoman continued.
The Asklepios clinics, which treat around 60 percent of Hamburg's corona patients in their seven houses, have not yet made any arrangements to postpone operations.
However, in a few cases patients would have had the surgery rescheduled for a later appointment.
An Asklepios spokesman warned against postponing necessary treatments: "It is a disaster if the patients who are really serious do not go to the hospital."
During the first corona wave in spring, a third fewer heart emergency patients came to the Asklepios clinics than in the same period of the previous year.
Postponing operations also means a loss of income for hospitals.
The medical director and chairman of the UKE, Prof. Burkhard Göke, was pleased that the civil protection law passed on Wednesday will reintroduce the flat rates for beds that are kept free for corona patients.
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According to the intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine, 586 of a total of 718 available intensive care beds in Hamburg were occupied on Friday.
86 of the intensive care patients - almost 15 percent - were treated for Covid-19.
Intensive care bed registry of the DIVI
Corona numbers Hamburg
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