The omicron variant of the coronavirus is causing incidences that seemed unimaginable in previous waves. All of Germany is affected by four-digit values. Whole Germany? No, a district near the Alps inhabited by Upper Bavaria has shone red like a ripe tomato on the otherwise violet map of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in the past few days: It is Rosenheim, which repeatedly set negative records during the pandemic had reported. 155 is the number that the so-called dashboard showed for the district a few days ago, for the city of Rosenheim there was even a 144, by far the lowest in Germany.
Can this be? No, the story has less to do with an indomitable people who are immune to the plague than with a technical defect that paralyzed the reporting system in Rosenheim for ten days. It will probably take until Thursday, according to the Rosenheim district office, then the numbers should be right again – and be as high as they are currently high, which means: quite high. According to the RKI, the seven-day incidence in Bavaria on Sunday was 1939. That was a new record.
The maximum values, which are losing public attention in the face of the war in Ukraine and because of the comparatively less dangerous omicron variant, are felt by the employees of the clinics. And every day. “We have the Bavarian peculiarity that there has been no relief since mid-November,” says Roland Engehausen, Managing Director of the Bavarian Hospital Society (BKG). This means the high incidence, but above all it means the situation in the clinics. The situation is relatively stable, says Engehausen, but that’s exactly part of the problem, because: “In contrast to other federal states such as Schleswig-Holstein, where there were phases of relief, the numbers in Bavaria are stable, but at a high level .”
The occupancy of beds with infected people has more than doubled since mid-January
According to Engehausen, the number of Covid patients in the normal wards is still increasing slightly, according to a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health, the occupancy of the beds with infected people has “far more than doubled” since mid-January https://www.sueddeutsche.de /bayern/ “But we have that well under control,” says Engehausen. This is because some are there with, but not because of, an infection. According to Engehausen, it is different in the intensive care units, if you are here with a positive result, this is usually the reason for it.
According to the RKI, the infected in intensive care units are increasingly including vaccinated people. A few days ago, a report by the MDR made people sit up and take notice: “The proportion of people who have been boosted in the intensive care units is increasing rapidly,” it said. This is not wrong when you simply look at the figures from the RKI, but at the same time it is misleading. Not wrong, because around a third of the corona patients in intensive care units nationwide are now unvaccinated and almost as many are boosted there. The statement is misleading because, considering a vaccination rate that is 74.5 percent in Bavaria, for example, there are simply many more vaccinated than unvaccinated people.
The hospitalization incidences are therefore revealing – and in the case of vaccinated people they are significantly below those of people without vaccination. Those who have been boosted have to be treated proportionally much less often in hospital. The RKI therefore writes of a continued “very high vaccination effectiveness” for those who have been boosted compared to hospitalization.
The utilization of the intensive care beds is “unchanged high”
This finding coincides with what Niels Zorger, medical director of the Barmherzige Brüder Hospital in Regensburg, describes. The infected intensive care patients in his clinic either have no vaccination protection or have a greatly reduced immune system. In principle, the occupancy of the intensive care beds is “unchanged high” – which applies to the entire Free State, Roland Engehausen from the hospital company speaks of a “plateau without peak” in the case of the permanently high load, the Bavarian Ministry of Health of a still “overall high use of the intensive care capacities”.
Expressed in numbers, this means that eleven percent of the intensive care beds are free as of Friday afternoon. The critical threshold, which should not be permanently undercut in order to be able to continue to treat emergencies, is 15 percent. In some districts such as Bamberg or Schweinfurt, almost half of the beds are free, but in Fürth or Kempten not a single bed is available. And so not only do operations have to be postponed when too many employees are infected again. Intensive care units are still being temporarily canceled for new admissions.
That, according to Thomas Bollinger, head of the Institute for Virology and Clinical Microbiology at the Bayreuth Clinic, is still happening in his house. In general, the current phase since the beginning of the pandemic is “almost the most difficult for hospitals,” says Bollinger. “The emergency rooms are back to normal, but at the same time there are no staff due to infections and we have fewer beds because we have to isolate the many infected patients.” It is hardly possible to convey to the staff at such a time that people can go back to the discotheques – Bollinger calls them “aerosol hells”. “We are increasingly seeing that established employees are close to tears. They are simply through.”
Those responsible do not fear an excessive additional burden from war refugees
According to the tenor, those responsible in the hospitals do not fear an excessive additional burden from refugees from Ukraine. In many cases, the refugees are not vaccinated, or only with the Sputnik vaccine, which is not approved in the EU, and Roland Engehausen from the BKG expects quite a few infected people. “Something is going to happen,” he says, but predicts: “The hospitals are prepared for it.”
This is confirmed by Sylvia Pemmer, Deputy Medical Director at the St. Josef Caritas Hospital in Regensburg. There are still plenty of isolation beds in normal wards anyway, and non-infected refugees generally receive a vaccination offer.
The federal government’s plan to largely phase out the corona protective measures despite – some would say: regardless – of the high number of infections on March 20th is causing displeasure in the clinics. “That may be desirable, but the incidences have not gone down as many had hoped,” Roland Engehausen points out. And then he says something else that he actually refers to the relaxation of the measures that have been decided, but which is equally valid for the pandemic-weary people in times of war: “The hospitals have been forgotten.”