Corona in Switzerland: intensive care doctors warn of bottlenecks

Crown numbers in Switzerland have been high for weeks, while infections rose faster than in almost any other European country. But while strict measures were taken in France, Greece, Austria and the Czech Republic to break the trend, the Swiss let things go their way. Restaurants, open plan offices and gyms, with masks and protection concepts, are still open, small private celebrations are still allowed, also for financial reasons. Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer declared that one could not afford a “second lockdown”.

New infections in Switzerland are now slowly declining. Yet the country’s intensive care physicians are raising the alarm. Earlier in the week, the Swiss Society for Intensive Care Medicine (SGI) sent out a press release that sounded like a cry for help.

The 876 certified intensive care beds in Switzerland are occupied, and corona patients are in more than 500 of these beds. Some of them had to be relocated to another canton or even a different language region in the end, as care was no longer possible in their area. It is now “of utmost importance” to contain the pandemic and “postpone non-urgent interventions and treatments throughout Switzerland to avoid quality losses in intensive care treatments,” the letter said.

In the excitement that followed this announcement, politicians said that everything was, still, in green: there is a large reserve of uncertified intensive care beds so that treatment can continue to be guaranteed.

Antje Heise, head of the intensive care unit at Spital Thun and president of the medical profession at the Swiss Society of Intensive Care Medicine, confirmed this in a phone call on Thursday. But Heise also restricts: non-certified intensive care beds were created on short notice and may not have the same professional support as those that have been SGI certified.

“I also made more beds in the living room,” Heise says. In terms of infrastructure, this is not a problem: beds and equipment can be found. However, highly qualified personnel are required to provide intensive care to patients. And this staff has been in short supply for years. “Occasionally, you can call people from other stations and areas,” Heise says. “But basically, the more beds I create, the more quality suffers.”

With the publication earlier in the week, they wanted to shake up the population and politics and make it clear that intensive care units are on edge in many places. The intensive care physician says, “Our message was: 5 to 12.” Does Antje Heise believe that Switzerland as a whole needs stricter measures? “A week ago I would have personally said: Yes, that would be nice. At the moment we are seeing that the number of new infections is decreasing. In this regard, I now have the feeling that protective measures in Switzerland may be sufficient after all. ”

In fact, the situation in Switzerland has eased somewhat last week:

• While according to the Federal Office of Public Health more than 51,000 new infections were registered in the first week of November,

• there were just under 40,000 new infections between November 9 and 15.

Switzerland had 455 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. As in Germany, where the incidence is always observed at the local level, the cantonal authorities in Switzerland are also free to react with harsher measures if the local situation is particularly critical.

This was the case in the francophone west of the country, where at the beginning of November there were more than 1,000 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in many places. The canton of Geneva, for example, declared a state of emergency at the beginning of November, restaurants, hairdressers and gyms had to close. Meanwhile, new infections are also on the decline in Geneva.