The corona specialist at the Munich-Schwabing Clinic and pandemic advisor to the state government, Clemens Wendtner, welcomes the new hospital traffic light. “In view of the increasing number of vaccinations, the meaningfulness of the seven-day incidence has weakened,” says Wendtner. “What is really interesting now is the burden on clinics from the pandemic.”
The traffic light is an important instrument for this. Other clinic directors had previously praised the move away from incidence. “Ultimately, the decisive factor is not whether people get Corona, but how much the hospitals are burdened,” said the plant manager of the Passau Clinic, Stefan Nowak. The infectiologist and pandemic officer at the Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich, Christoph Spinner, also called the traffic light a “sensible measure”.
The new hospital traffic light makes the capacity utilization of the Bavarian clinics with corona patients the central benchmark for corona measures. S.he is listed first in the daily status report of the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL).
The traffic light is turned to yellow if more than 1200 patients have to be admitted to clinics throughout Bavaria within seven days because of a corona disease. The consequences: Instead of simple medical masks, people have to wear FFP2 masks again. The minimum standard for corona tests is raised to PCR tests. In addition, new person limits will be introduced for both public and private events.
The traffic light turns red when more than 600 corona patients are being treated in intensive care units in Bavaria. So far, of course, it is unclear which anti-corona measures should then apply. The state government does not want to make a decision until the border is actually broken.
According to the state government, there should no longer be a classic lockdown. However, it cannot be ruled out that red will focus on schools. Education Minister Michael Piazolo (FW) stuck to the goal of permanent and comprehensive classroom teaching on Tuesday after the cabinet, but said when asked: “We don’t yet know what to expect.”
Both yellow and red are measured in such a way that they are well below the previous maximum number of corona patients in the clinics. In hospital admissions within seven days, the peak so far was around 1750 patients. And in the intensive care units, around 800 corona intensive care patients across Bavaria are to be regarded as the “maximum critical care”, i.e. the limit for the resilience of the clinics.
Despite the increasing number of infections, the hospital traffic light is currently completely green. According to the LGL from Thursday at 2 p.m., 233 people with corona have been admitted to the Bavarian clinics in the past seven days. The so-called seven-day hospitalization incidence per 100,000 inhabitants was 1.77. Of course, it is much more memorable that yellow was undercut by 967 patients. The situation in the intensive care units is also relaxed. With reference to the Divi intensive care registry, the LGL reported 165 patients across Bavaria who are being treated in an intensive care unit for corona. 85 have to be ventilated invasively. Red is currently undercut by 435 patients.
The yellow level also takes long-covid into account
Corona specialist Wendtner expressly considers the two-stage traffic light to be good. “Yellow simply takes effect earlier,” he says. If the number of hospital admissions is correspondingly high, you still have a lead time for countermeasures before it hits the intensive care units after three or four weeks. Prime Minister Markus Söder argued similarly. Ventilation cases are “the decisive factor”, but the normal beds correlate with it, indicating the appropriate lead time when things get more serious.
Yellow also takes into account the long-covid factor, precisely because it includes all patients who have to go to a clinic because of Corona. How much Long Covid is worried about the government became clear on Wednesday when Söder spoke about it in the state parliament. He described cases of often younger people who were torn out of their lives and their professions as a result. Like the goal of saving lives, it is also one of the “protected goods” and the mandate of politics to “protect the population from harm”. Long-Covid could “hit anyone and it is completely unclear who gets it”.
The incidence is now “without legal consequences”. But it is not completely obsolete. And not only because it will continue to be collected and will probably continue to be in the focus of politics and medicine in the overall process. But also because it remains the lowest limit. The following also applies: If it exceeds the value of 35 in a city or a district, the 3G rule comes into effect across the board. Only 15 districts are currently below this value, mainly in Northern Bavaria, and the number is decreasing. The city of Rosenheim remains the front runner with a seven-day incidence of 191.9.