In view of the dramatically increasing number of corona infections, Bavaria is again declaring a nationwide disaster. The State Chancellery announced on Wednesday that Prime Minister Markus Söder ordered the disaster to be identified from November 11, 2021 due to “the current worrying situation in the corona pandemic. The formal identification of the disaster enables a coordinated and structured approach by all authorities, agencies and organizations involved in disaster control. According to its own statements, the state government currently sees an increased nationwide need for coordination “in the occupation of intensive care beds and the transfer of patients from overburdened clinics”.
In addition, in the event of a disaster, it would be easier to call the Bundeswehr for support operations. In the course of the pandemic, for example, soldiers had already helped out with care in various homes particularly affected by Corona. On the other hand, no formal disaster was necessary to help track contacts with infected people, as the Bundeswehr is now doing again in several Bavarian districts.
Regardless of such official definitions, the number of infections in Bavaria continues to rise. The Lower Bavarian district of Rottal-Inn is at the top nationwide with a four-digit seven-day incidence. The Robert Koch Institute reported an incidence value of 1104.3 for the region in southeast Bavaria on Wednesday. Compared to the previous day, 432 new cases had been added. “The numbers are just so high and we don’t know why,” said a spokeswoman for the district office in Pfarrkirchen.
The corona virus is also spreading rapidly elsewhere in the Free State. Nine Bavarian districts alone top the list of regions in Germany in which a particularly large number of people per 100,000 inhabitants were newly infected with Corona within a week. The seven-day incidence on Wednesday in the Traunstein district was just below 1000. In the districts of Dingolfing-Landau, Miesbach, Regen, Berchtesgadener Land and Oberallgäu the mark of 800 was exceeded, in Mühldorf am Inn and Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen it was just below. For all of Bavaria, the seven-day incidence on Wednesday was 395.8, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
The high value brings hospitals to their capacity limits in many places, the clinic traffic light is red for all of Bavaria. According to the relevant Divi intensive register, more than half of the 96 districts and larger cities in Bavaria were only less than ten percent on Wednesday of intensive care beds free. 21 municipalities reported that the intensive care units were fully occupied except for the last bed. Nationwide, 653 Covid patients were in intensive treatment, a good 130 more than a week ago and around twice as many as three weeks ago. On the national average, almost 91 percent of the intensive care beds are occupied.
Given the situation in the clinics, several public events were canceled on Wednesday. In the city of Rosenheim, for example, the commemoration for the upcoming memorial day and the popular Christmas market have to be canceled. This decision was “extremely difficult for him,” says Mayor Andreas March. But anyone who experiences how the nurses in the local clinic “fight to the limit of exhaustion and not infrequently beyond that for the lives of Covid patients cannot come to a different decision”. He could not and does not want to be responsible for the fact that triage decisions would be necessary due to a possible overload of the intensive care units, i.e. doctors would be faced with the choice of either treating one or the other patient. There will also be no Advent and Christmas markets in the Miesbach district this year. In view of the number of infections, District Administrator Olaf von Löwis canceled all events on Wednesday. Even with strict hygiene concepts, such markets are not responsible, said Löwis.
The current development is now also having an impact on the state parliament. In plenary sessions, the 3-G rule also applies from now on – the MPs and everyone else present must be vaccinated, recovered or tested negative.