Status: 11/24/2021 6:46 a.m.
Because the hospitals in some federal states are reaching their limit due to the large number of corona patients, the transfer of patients to other regions is being prepared. The clinics in Thuringia are particularly affected.
Bavaria and four other federal states have officially activated the so-called cloverleaf concept for the strategic transfer of intensive care patients against the background of the increasing capacity utilization of the nationwide intensive care units. As the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) announced yesterday evening, a “larger number” of patients from Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, Berlin and Brandenburg will be relocated to other “clover-leaf regions” in the next few days.
“We have to assume that there will be relocations beyond a clover leaf,” said the chairman of the working group of the Conference of Interior Ministers for fire-fighting, rescue, disaster control and civil defense, Hermann Schröder.
Concept developed in corona pandemic
The so-called cloverleaf concept was developed during the corona pandemic in order to facilitate the distribution of patients when there was a high regional occupancy rate in the intensive care units. It provides for the installation to be carried out initially within the five regions – west, north, east, south, and south-west. If there are no longer any vacancies in one of these regions, the transfer to other areas will be organized in exchange with the joint reporting and situation center of the federal and state governments at the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid (BBK). A specialist group from the Robert Koch Institute is providing advice.
There is currently still free capacity in the north and in Hesse, for example. Thuringia forms a clover leaf with Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Berlin. With Saxony and Thuringia, two federal states with high numbers of corona cases belong to the east clover leaf. The Free State of Bavaria, which is currently also heavily affected by Corona, forms the southern clover leaf.
A DIVI spokeswoman for the AFP news agency said the steering group that coordinates the relocation will meet today. It should also be clarified with which means of transport the affected patients would be transferred.
“Corona situation is out of control”
“The corona situation is very worrying and currently not under control,” DIVI President Gernot Marx said on Monday. One is very worried. More than 3,670 Covid-19 patients are currently being cared for in intensive care units in Germany, and just under 1200 were added last week. Regionally, for example in Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony and some metropolitan areas, the intensive care units are already overloaded.
“This overload situation already makes relocation in the respective federal states necessary and prioritization,” says Marx. This means that operations that can be planned have to be postponed and the clinics have to create reserves. If the infection dynamics persist in the next few days and weeks and there continues to be an unchecked increase in seriously ill Covid 19 patients, a prioritization of interventions and reorganization in large parts of Germany will be necessary.
General health care is then no longer available at the very high, accustomed level. However, every emergency and every Covid 19 patient is cared for, emphasized Marx.
Thuringia’s clinics at the limit
According to Health Minister Heike Werner (Linke), Thuringia is already preparing the transfer of hospital patients to other federal states. Such transfers will take place in the next few days, Werner said after a cabinet meeting yesterday. She cited this as one of the reasons that the corona measures are now being tightened significantly in Thuringia. “We can only hope for the solidarity of other federal states if we ourselves make every effort to interrupt the wave,” said the minister.
The Thuringian intensive care coordinator Michael Bauer had already warned last week that, like last winter, relocations to Schleswig-Holstein could be possible again. Even now the situation in the neighboring federal states is tense, distribution via the clover leaf system is difficult.
In Thuringia, the situation in the hospitals is extremely tense. Yesterday, more than a third of the intensive care beds available in the country were occupied by Covid-19 patients. The hospitalization rate was by far the highest nationwide at 18.3 corona patients per 100,000 inhabitants in a seven-day period.
Saxony is still “far away” from triage
In Saxony, the situation is even more relaxed: According to hospital coordinator Michael Albrecht, the situation there is still a long way from triage. The Dresden University Hospital only accepted ten new intensive care patients on Monday night. “So we are reorganizing the available capacities every day in order to guarantee the supply. Nevertheless, we are far from limiting or triaging the offers of intensive care care.”
On Monday, the President of the State Medical Association, Erik Bodendieck, said in several interviews that Saxony had to prepare for a triage. Triage means that medical professionals must decide who to help first due to scarce resources. Monday morning’s forecast predicts that there will be 669 intensive care patients in the Free State on December 6, Albrecht said. “We are currently at just under 350, which means almost doubling the current number of intensive care patients in 14 days.”
If the new corona rules do not work, you actually have to consider how the patients can be optimally cared for. Albrecht said at the same time that no hospital had to come into the situation to triage. “If such a case threatens, the patient will be transferred to a hospital within the cluster or network. If we get to the limit, the patient will be transferred nationwide within the clover leaf organization.”