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The capacities of intensive care beds are currently the most important monitoring instrument, Health Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens) said on Tuesday. A utilization of 60 to 70 percent would be critical, he said in the morning paper: It is important to differentiate the total number of intensive care beds from those specifically for Covid 19 patients. There were 288 here at the top in spring. However, occupancy increased by 40 percent to 203 in one week.
In several federal states, however, there are already critical advances in the number of hospital patients with Covid-19. In any case, the number of intensive care patients in Austria increased rapidly: while the comparison of seven days yesterday and Monday showed an increase of 30 percent to 188, on Tuesday it was already 40 percent with 203 care patients. intensive.
Gesundheit Österreich (GÖG) 14-day forecast sees 243 occupied intensive care beds by November 4, meaning no more than five patients on average will be allowed in the next eight days, but there were eight on average in those last eight days.
24 percent occupancy
According to the AGES panel, there are currently 203 intensive care patients out of a total of 854 beds available, which means an occupancy of almost 24 percent. In addition to the number of infections, the protection of the elderly and nursing homes and the protection of the healthcare system are also decisive here, but a major focus will be put on this through a massive increase in testing, Anschober announced.
With 75 intensive care beds, the occupancy rate with Covid19 patients in Vienna was around 24 percent on Tuesday, exactly in line with the Austrian average. In Upper Austria, too, the actual occupancy rate was not very high, because 30 Covid-19 patients were in intensive care units there, there are 243 intensive care beds in total, 140 of them for corona cases according to the board. , which “only” would reach 18 percent.
However, hospitals in Upper Austria have already started again to close elective services and distribute corona patients evenly in all houses in order to be able to maintain medical care for as long as possible.
The number of intensive care beds could still be increased significantly, up to 420, but the bottleneck is staff, warned Jens Meier, chief of the Clinic for Anesthesiology and Operative Intensive Care Medicine at Linz Kepler University Hospital (KUK).
Critical situation in the West
Bernd Lamprecht, general director of the KUK Pulmonary Clinic, appealed to the population to adhere to the measures: if the trend of new infections continues, the places reserved for patients with corona in Upper Austria would be exhausted at the beginning of November, which would mean a total stoppage of elective services, these differ from essential services in that they are not classified as absolutely necessary.
The total number of patients in hospital treatment for corona increased by 75 percent from 799 to 1,400. Regionally, the situation in Vorarlberg already seems critical: while 43 people infected with Covid-19 were treated in local hospitals on Sunday, there were 69 on Tuesday afternoon. They check daily if there is a need to make arrangements for the emergency care center at the Dornbirn fairgrounds. .
Also from Tyrol it was said that the situation was “quite serious”, according to Governor Günther Platter (ÖVP) and the infectologist and director of the University Clinic of Internal Medicine in Innsbruck, given the growing number of patients with Covid 19 in hospitals . “We must do everything possible to prevent the virus from spreading uncontrollably, especially among older population groups and people at risk, so as not to push our healthcare system to the limit of what is possible,” Weiss explained.
While at the end of last week 107 people infected with corona were being treated as hospitalized patients, eight of them in the intensive care unit, by Tuesday there were already 152 people, 18 of them in intensive care.
