The hospitals have to treat more corona infected people again. For the first time since the delta wave subsided in early winter, two corona indicators for the burden on the health system are increasing again. After a rapid increase in November, both the hospitalization incidence and the new admissions of patients with Covid-19 to the intensive care units initially fell again just as quickly. Since the omicron variant has dominated the course of infection, these values have increased again.
This development was to be expected: the number of new infections has been increasing for weeks. With a delay, the omicron wall is now also hitting the hospitals. Experts were already expecting a sharp increase in the number of people infected with Covid in the emergency rooms. The reported numbers have been increasing for a few days now, including them “Nowcast” estimate of the hospitalization incidence prepared by the SZ rises steeply.
The estimate is also necessary because the current incidence of hospitalization alone can hardly reflect the burden on hospitals. The respective daily value only says how many people per 100,000 inhabitants have tested positive for Corona and been admitted to a clinic in the past seven days. The decisive factor here is the test – and not the hospital admission. If a person is hospitalized today, they are not counted for today’s hospitalization incidence, but on the day of their positive corona test. However, it can be much longer than seven days in the past and is therefore not included in the current incidence calculation. The reporting chain, which is partly based on fax machines, also leads to delays. The result: the hospitalization incidence significantly underestimates the actual burden in the clinics. It has already happened that the hospitalization incidence reported by the Robert Koch Institute was doubled two weeks later.
Whether current value or estimate: It is striking how strongly the youngest are currently affected by the development. Although the incidence of new infections is highest among the five to 14 year olds, it is the young children up to five years who have to be hospitalized the most often after the over 65 year olds. According to estimates, 5.9 to 7.5 out of 100,000 children under five are currently in German hospitals with a coronavirus infection. The data does not show whether they need to be treated there because of the infection, or whether the infection is only an accompanying diagnosis of another disease. A look abroad also shows that many infections with the corona virus are only discovered in the hospital, so the infection was often not the reason for the admission. In England, only about half of the corona patients were treated mainly for their Covid 19 disease in the past week.
It is not yet possible to estimate how high the exposure to omicron in the intensive care units will be. The bottleneck should be the normal stations. The expert council of the federal government is leaving in its third opinion assumes that the “extent of hospital exposure will depend decisively on the incidences in the group of unvaccinated adults and those over 50 years of age”. In these groups, the incidences are still comparatively low, but based on experience from the previous waves, it can be assumed that they too will soon become infected more frequently. The Expert Council therefore warns of “a large number of hospital admissions” if the incidences continue to rise.