Status: 22.04.2022 2:20 p.m
The corona situation is easing in the hospitals. The number of infected patients is falling, and fewer and fewer staff are falling ill. There is still no time to take a deep breath – and the next autumn will definitely come.
Georg von Boyen has had a tough few weeks. He is the medical director of the clinics in the Sigmaringen district in Baden-Württemberg, where the incidence has meanwhile risen to over 3,600. He also noticed this in his clinics: New isolation wards had to be opened, extra staff were withdrawn from other areas for this purpose, and at the same time more and more employees called in sick because they had been infected with Corona.
“For about ten days, however, we have noticed that the number of cases in our wards has been falling continuously. And what is crucial: Fewer and fewer employees have to stay at home due to a Covid infection,” says von Boyen, relieved. The hospitals in Baden-Württemberg have 13 percent fewer patients with Corona than a week ago.
Long OP list
A bit of everyday hospital life is slowly returning, he says. Employees would return to their regular teams from the isolation wards. But there is still a lot to do. The list of postponed operations is long: urological interventions, artificial joints that have to be inserted, cardiological operations that can no longer wait. There is hardly any time to take a deep breath, says the doctor.
The situation is easing in many hospitals. The number of people with corona infections in the wards in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia (-13 percent each) and Brandenburg (-14 percent) has fallen particularly sharply. Saarland even recorded a decline of 15 percent. “We are very confident that this trend will be sustainable and will continue over the summer,” says Gerald Gass, Chairman of the German Hospital Association. “Of course, there can always be significant increases in individual regions.”
The virus as part of everyday life
The virus will remain and become part of everyday life. In the Ernst von Bergmann Klinikum Potsdam there is still a special area for severe cases, where there are currently 14 patients. “But a few weeks ago we started to integrate lighter cases in a decentralized manner on normal wards. Because we have to be prepared for the fact that Corona will continue to exist and become a bit normal in the hospital,” says Managing Director Hans-Ulrich Schmidt. The mood in the team is mixed, even though the number of corona cases in Brandenburg hospitals has recently fallen by ten percent within a week. “There are areas that have had a high level of stress in the last two years and have hardly been able to breathe, especially in the intensive care units. And there is concern that Corona will catch up with us again soon.”
Doctor von Boyen in Sigmaringen also has this fear. “I look a lot at the southern hemisphere of the world. You can maybe see a bit ahead of what could happen here in winter.” He regrets that vaccination progress in Germany is now stagnating. “I have a sense of déjà vu: Last year, too, there was a certain relief in politics as the phase of relaxation began.” Nobody bothers anymore to think about what could come in the fall. “If politics wakes up again in October, we’ll have increasing numbers in the house again,” he fears.
The fact that Health Minister Karl Lauterbach warns of a “killer variant” in the fall does not help. “It’s just said like that, without deriving any consequences from it.” He hopes that politicians will act in time before it gets cold again. So that he and his colleagues in the clinic don’t have to face another tough autumn and winter.