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Hospitals have to re-treat increasingly severe corona patients. The number is increasing considerably, especially in large cities.
By Oda Lambrecht and Christian Baars, NDR
A discussion has broken out in Germany about the informative value of the corona infection figures. One thing is clear: more and more people are getting infected, especially in big cities. They are “the stage where we can see if we can keep the pandemic under control or if control is slipping away,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said a few days ago. He spoke of a disturbing image. And the director of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, said that the current situation worries him a lot.
Others appeased, such as the president of the National Association of Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), Andreas Gassen. In an interview with the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” he accused the RKI of “false scaremongering” and said: “We have to stop looking at the number of new infections like rabbits to snake”. Even 10,000 infections a day would not be a drama if only one in 1000 were seriously ill, as is the case today.
So the question is: Are there many infections that can be detected, but that are not problematic for 99.9 percent of those infected, as described by the president of KBV? In any case, the data contradicts it. According to the RKI, about six percent of those confirmed to be infected are currently in a hospital. And according to the DIVI intensive care registry, 246 Covid 19 patients were in intensive care in Germany at the end of August. There are currently more than 600.
Clear trend
Of the Ed It has also asked the 15 largest cities how many Covid 19 patients have been treated in recent months. Not everyone has collected this data. However, a clear trend can be seen in the figures available. In the summer, the number of hospitalized patients treated in all major cities initially decreased significantly and later stabilized at a low level.
But since mid-September there has been a slight increase initially in almost all major cities, which has accelerated significantly since the beginning of October. You cannot read in this how many of the newly infected people have to go to the hospital every day, but it is clear: currently, many more people go to a clinic due to Covid 19 than are discharged.
The number of patients in the clinic is increasing
In Berlin, fewer than 40 Covid-19 patients were hospitalized at the end of August. Over the course of September, this number slowly increased at first. At the end of the month, about 100 patients were in the hospital at the same time. And now that number has doubled again in less than two weeks. 201 Covid-19 patients are currently being treated as inpatients in Berlin, 49 of them in intensive care (as of October 12).
In Hamburg and Cologne, the number of hospital patients has almost doubled since the end of September: from 34 to 62 in Hamburg and from 56 to 100 in Cologne. In both cities there are also more seriously ill people in intensive care units. Munich announced that between about 20 and 50 people have been hospitalized there every day since mid-August because of Corona, “with a slight increase in recent days.”
In almost every other large city that publishes data or has sent it on demand, more and more infected people are being treated in hospitals. Only Leipzig reports a consistently low number of nine patients currently in hospital treatment. But the number of infections there is also comparatively low.
Bed occupancy increases
Stuttgart did not send concrete figures to hospital patients, but a graphic evaluation. Consequently, normal Covid stations were only about five percent full at the end of August and about 15 percent a month later. In early October, bed occupancy soared to around 25 percent.
Frankfurt, in turn, relayed data on how many of the reported city’s Covid-19-infected people had to be hospitalized within a week – that is, they made it to the hospital. That was less than 10 percent on average between early May and mid-September. But since then, that number has risen from 12 percent in the week of Sept. 14-20 to 37 percent last week. Only at the peak of the first wave of pandemics, between late March and mid-April, was this rate even higher. At the same time, significantly more people have recently been re-infected: in the week of September 14, about 150 cases were reported in Frankfurt, at the beginning of October there were about 500.
“Underestimated danger from time delays”
Experts have long predicted that this is exactly what will happen. The German Society for Epidemiology published a statement in early September together with two other specialized societies. In it they point to the “underestimated danger of delays.” Keep in mind “that truly dramatic events are always late,” explains one of the authors, Munich epidemiologist Eva Grill. “Of those who are infected today, it may not be visible for three or four weeks.” And the deaths would appear later. Also, it was mainly younger people who got infected in the summer, but the average age is now increasing again. This dynamic worries her, Grill said.
That is why several medical professionals are increasingly angry with their official representative, the head of KBV, Gassen. Marc Hanefeld, for example, is a GP in Bremervörde and previously worked as an intensive care physician. In an open letter that he distributed on Twitter and for which he claims to have received encouragement from many colleagues, he asks for Gassen’s resignation. He accuses him of a “very dangerous form of communication.”
“Bad service done”
In an interview with the Ed Hanefeld says the alleys have done doctors “a disservice” by minimizing the threat, especially now in early fall, when the number of cases was increasing again. Now it must be a matter of protecting people. Not only are the elderly at risk, Hanefeld emphasized, there are also some younger people who are seriously ill, and many who have suffered the consequences of an infection for weeks or months.
However, the KBV remains at the request of the Ed in your position. She cautions to be careful, but emphasizes that “there is no reason to fear.” He points out that the health system is well positioned and clinics have enough free intensive care beds. He also writes that it is necessary to primarily look at the infected age groups, as younger people rarely die from corona infection. The KBV compares the current situation with the situation in April, when many more infected people became seriously ill. At that time, according to KBV, significantly more older people were infected.
Increased risk
However, RKI’s current status report shows that more and more older people are re-infected, especially those aged 70 or older who are particularly at risk. In the summer there were always fewer than 300 infections per week in this group, sometimes even less than 200. However, this number has again increased significantly over a month. Last week, the RKI counted nearly 2,000 cases of infections in the age group 70 and older and almost the same number between the ages of 60 and 69. As a result, the risk has again increased significantly and will lead to more serious or even fatal courses.
