The number of corona infections in Germany is skyrocketing, the vaccination campaign is stalling, the number of available intensive care beds is around 4,500 less than a year ago due to a lack of staff. Facts Suggesting Dramatic Weeks Could Be Imminent.
Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow therefore warned on Friday morning on ZDF with previously unimagined sharpness: “In the next few days we will come to the situation that we no longer have enough intensive care beds,” said the left-wing politician.
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“We have a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And we will no longer be able to guarantee anyone who comes to the hospital unvaccinated that they will still be treated in Thuringia at all. ”One can guarantee that one will be treated and that everyone who needs help will get help. “But he will no longer be able to get them in Thuringian hospitals.”
And his Saxon colleague Michael Kretschmer warned in a similarly urgent tone on Deutschlandfunk that there would be a new lockdown debate without quick action. “We have no time. If we take too much time now, it will end with a lockdown, like last year, ”said the CDU politician. Measures have to be taken now and not in two or three weeks.
Kretschmer calls for the reintroduction of the free corona tests
“We have to protect this country from a lockdown,” said Kretschmer. To do this, you need an infection protection law that also provides tools to really counter the pandemic. In this context, he also spoke out in favor of free tests.
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It must also be made clear that the 2G regulation is not an unreasonable burden, but an instrument to prevent a complete lockdown. 2G means that only those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered in the last six months are allowed access to certain locations and that tests are not sufficient for unvaccinated persons. The Saxon cabinet wants to introduce such a regulation this Friday.
Saxony and Thuringia are among the federal states with the highest incidences, but the lowest rates of fully vaccinated. For Saxony, the RKI reported a value of 56.9 percent on Thursday and 60.9 percent for Thuringia. The national average is 66.9 percent. Bavaria is also below average with 64.8 percent.
On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported a high level of new infections for the second day in a row – 37,120 confirmed positive tests and 154 more Covid-19 deaths within 24 hours. The seven-day incidence reached 169.9 – that is the number of infections per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days. In Thuringia it was more than twice as high at 386.9. Saxony was almost level with 385.7, followed by Bavaria with 256.8.
Spahn expects more and more intensive care patients
Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) because of the high number of infections with more and more intensive care patients in the coming weeks. About 0.8 percent of the newly infected would need treatment in the intensive care units, said Spahn on Friday after a meeting of federal and state health ministers in Lindau. Usually this occurs after 10 to 14 days.
“If we have just under 40,000 newly infected people today, 350 to 400 of them will be admitted to the intensive care units in a few days,” said Spahn. “That just shows that there are still a few weeks that are very, very difficult one way or another.” There are already the first regions in Germany from which Covid-19 patients would have to be relocated due to full intensive care units.
Not all of the reasons for the dramatic numbers are clear. But: “That correlates very clearly with the vaccination level,” said the Leipzig epidemiologist Markus Scholz, who mainly analyzes the situation in Saxony, of the dpa news agency. “The vaccinated risk groups are now at risk again, you have to be careful.” That is why people over 70 years of age urgently need a “booster”.
Such a refresher would also make sense for everyone else, said Scholz. “This is really the highest railway now,” warned the professor at the Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Leipzig. According to the RKI, so far only around 2.4 million people in Germany have received a booster vaccination.
The vaccination rates cannot be the only explanation, because Brandenburg also has a weak vaccination rate of 60.8 percent, but the incidences are by no means as high. In the previous corona waves, it was also suspected that the high average age in Saxony and Thuringia could be another factor. In Erfurt, the late end of the holiday is seen as another reason.
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In Bavaria, the authorities can no longer fully understand the causes. “The infection process is diffuse,” it says, according to the dpa, simply from the district office in the Miesbach hotspot. There the incidence is over 700. You can no longer control it, the numbers rose exponentially. Contacts would no longer be followed up, and quarantine orders would no longer be checked.
In its latest weekly report on Thursday evening, the RKI changed the risk assessment for incompletely or not vaccinated people from “high” to “very high”. The RKI writes: “For fully vaccinated people, the risk is assessed as moderate, but increasing due to the increasing number of infections.” A week ago, the risk for vaccinated people was described as “moderate” in the report.
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The RKI also emphasizes, however, that all vaccines available in this country “according to the current state of knowledge, with full vaccination effectively protect against serious illness”. The current development of the situation is nevertheless “very worrying”, writes the RKI.
If measures such as masks, spacing, reducing contacts and ventilation do not quickly reduce the number of infections, a further increase in serious illnesses and deaths is to be feared. In this case, the treatment capacities of the intensive care units could also be exceeded.
The acting Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) said on Thursday evening in the ARD Tagesthemen whether there could be another Christmas in a small group in 2021, it would be decided in the next few weeks. However, there will be no restrictions for those who have been vaccinated or recovered. The vaccinations mean that “much more everyday life is now possible than usual with these incidences,” said the minister. Spahn continues: “I can’t tell you yet how it will be at Christmas.”