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Berlin (dpa) - Concern about a severe third wave in the corona pandemic is causing intensive care physicians to demand an extension of the nationwide lockdown beyond March 7th.
It is necessary to hold out three more weeks until the beginning of April in order to have more time for vaccinations, especially for risk groups, said the President of the Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (Divi), Gernot Marx, in a video link.
Then it should be opened slowly.
According to Divi calculations, decisive factors for the utilization of the intensive care units include the spread of the more contagious Corona variant B.1.1.7 and the speed at which people over 35 years of age are vaccinated.
According to a new Divi forecast model that calculates with different scenarios, an opening in March could, in the worst case, drive the numbers of seriously ill corona patients in clinics exorbitantly up, it said.
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With early easing in the worst scenario, up to 25,000 Covid-19 intensive care patients are expected as early as mid-May, an extremely high value that would overwhelm intensive care units.
The previous high was in January at 6,000 such patients, at the moment there are around 2,900. This corresponds to the peak of the first wave in spring 2020. This situation is manageable.
A continuation of the lockdown until the beginning of April would bring, according to the prognosis model, a situation that has yet to be managed for intensive care medicine, with around 5000 patients in mid-May.
Because then the wave of vaccinations has a better chance of pushing itself in front of the wave of infection.
"Three weeks of discipline between March 7th and April 1st decide the game in stoppage time," said Christian Karagiannidis, medical and scientific director of the Divi intensive care register.
According to the model, an opening on April 21 would be even more helpful.
Then there would only be around 2500 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units in mid-May.
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The Divi-Mediziner advised to align opening strategies in a strategy change with the R-value.
So far, the focus has been on the 7-day incidence, which represents infections per 100,000 inhabitants in one week.
The R value shows how many other people infected by an infected person on average.
It should not rise above 1.2, warned the medical association.
Due to the more contagious variant, it is feared that the R value will be more difficult to keep below 1.
Only when it is below 1 for a long time does the infection process subside.
"We urgently need to appeal that vaccinations are extremely effective," said Janssens, particularly with regard to the Astrazeneca vaccine.
They are the lifeline that will help to finally get out of this crisis.
The population is at the end, but improvement is in prospect.
For the models it was assumed that the vaccination protects 100 percent against such a severe course of the disease that one has to be treated in the intensive care unit.
For the doctors, it is also about the burden on the staff: he has never experienced a situation in which so many employees from different areas were so mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted, said Marx.
"They are not machines."
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A calculation by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) published on Wednesday assigned more than half of the people in Germany over 15 years of age to the risk group for severe Covid-19 courses.
Age (over 65 years) and certain previous illnesses were decisive.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210225-99-594666 / 2