Hospitalization rate: "No fixed definition of when a hospital is overloaded"

The intensive care units in German hospitals were fuller during the pandemic than they are now.

Nevertheless, the situation is tense: the high number of infections and the associated restrictions are making it difficult for facilities across the country to cope.

Due to staff shortages due to quarantine and isolation, says Gerald Gaß, CEO of the German Hospital Society (DKG), three out of four hospitals would no longer be able to offer their normal range of services.

“The hospitals are in an extremely stressful situation.” The federal states have to argue with this overload of the hospitals if they want to introduce corona hotspots with stricter rules in regions, based on the federal infection protection law.

At the beginning of February there was no indication that the situation would still be as tense.

At that time, the Robert Koch Institute had published the results of modeling the omicron wave.

Based on the assumption that compared to the Delta variant, only every sixth to seventh Omikron patient comes to the intensive care unit, only a few scenarios resulted in maximum utilization of the intensive care units.

So far this has proven to be correct.

The hospitalization rate was 7.21 on Wednesday;

Covid patients occupied around 10 percent of the available intensive care beds.

Both values ​​were significantly higher around Christmas 2020.

“An unprecedented number of patients”

But with regard to the hospitalization rate, there are clear regional differences: In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it is over 19, in Berlin under 3. In Hamburg there are on average four intensive care beds available per facility, in Bremen only 0.6.

An extreme situation is reported, for example, from the Mittelrhein community clinic in Rhineland-Palatinate.

"The number of Covid patients," says spokeswoman Kerstin Macher, "has risen to an unprecedented number in the past few days and weeks." 90 Covid patients are currently being treated at the five hospital locations, slightly less than ten percent of them in intensive care.

The situation in Franconia is different: Manfred Wagner, pandemic officer at the Fürth Clinic, points out that

that most Covid patients would be in intensive care with, not because of, Covid.

"Therefore, the burden has to be managed." Many other clinics confirmed to the FAZ that they had been confronted with significantly higher occupancy rates at other times during the pandemic.

There are a number of reasons why German hospitals are still in a difficult situation.

In normal wards, the burden due to the corona patients is very high, says the Fürth pandemic officer Wagner.

"Due to the necessary isolation measures, care is associated with a great deal of effort."

"There is no fixed definition of when a hospital is overloaded," says Markus Heggen, spokesman for the Berlin Charité.

"In the end, to put it very simply, every hospital notices this for itself." In addition to the number of Covid patients, the severity of the courses, the condition of other intensive care patients and the availability of staff also play a role.

Significantly higher sick leave than usual at this time of year

In the Charité, says a spokesman, the maintenance of the clinic is guaranteed, although employees have to go into domestic isolation on an ongoing basis.

That's not the rule.

"We are in the situation that clinics have to deregister from emergency care and postpone services," says DKG Chairman Gass.

Research by the FAZ shows that interventions are regularly postponed.

In the Hamburg-Eppendorf University Hospital, planned, non-urgent operations would have to be postponed and beds blocked, a spokesman said.

From Fürth it is said that twenty percent of the workforce is on sick leave, about half of them because of Corona or caring for sick children.

And in the Mittelrhein community clinic, the sick leave among employees is “significantly higher than is usual at this time of year.

The current situation means that non-acute operations or treatments have to be postponed and the focus is on emergency care.”

Excessive loosening therefore provokes skepticism among hospital staff.

"The pandemic is not over yet," says Franz Christian Meier, spokesman for KMG Kliniken SE from north-eastern Germany.

Kerstin Macher from the Mittelrhein adds that relaxation in society should not be transferred to hospitals.

"The current situation requires, for example, a further restriction of visits in order to protect patients and employees as best as possible."

The Ministry of Health's decision to only extend the compensation payments for hospitals until April 18 is also criticized.

DKG Chairman Gaß finds this “incomprehensible” and that the pandemic is not over after all.

The consequences of the current situation are likely to be felt in the coming months and years, adds Kerstin Macher.

"Instead of bureaucratic hurdles, financial security and flexible personnel deployment must be ensured."