Maximum value for crown patients in intensive care units

• For the first time, the number of corona patients in German intensive care units has exceeded the threshold of 4,000.
• Health authorities informed the RKI of 432 people who had died from a corona infection in 24 hours.

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The number of corona patients in German intensive care units has exceeded the threshold of 4,000 for the first time. On Friday, the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi) reported 4,011 People in intensive care. Those were 31 more than the day beforeas can be seen in the daily Divi report. 60 percent of patients are invasively ventilated. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the number of recently reported deaths was the third highest since the pandemic began..

After the rapid increase in the number of infections, even in October, the number of seriously ill and deceased people was expected to increase significantly as well. Despite a partial lockdown that has been in place since early November the infection rate has been stagnant at a very high level for several weeks. The RKI gave the 7-day incidence – that is, the number of new corona cases per 100,000 inhabitants per week – on Friday with 134.7, a week earlier it was 136.5.

432 deaths in 24 hours

The health authorities informed the RKI 432 people in 24 hours, who participated in or with a The corona infection has died. The previous high of 487 deaths was reached on Wednesday. The total number of people who have had or have had a history of Sars-CoV-2 infection died increased to 18,034.

The Federal Statistical Office reported on Friday that in the first week of November in Germany five percent more people died than the average in the past four years. According to preliminary results, at least 18,483 people died in the 45th calendar week (November 2-8, 2020). The number of Corona-related deaths was also highest in Germany in the first week of November. The RKI reported 1,067 deaths in the period.

As before, a relatively large number of people in Germany are infected with Corona. the RKI counted 23,449 new infections on Friday. Therefore, the value is slightly higher than the 22,806 cases of the previous week.

The number of available intensive care beds has been significantly reduced

According to RKI’s management report on Friday, the so-called seven-day R-value was 1.04 (previous day: 0.94). This means that 100 infected people infect 104 more people. The value represents the appearance of the infection 8 to 16 days ago. If the value is below 1 for a long time, the infection rate decreases.

In intensive care units, where the development of the number of infections is noted only with a delay the number of available beds has dropped significantly in recent weeks. According to the Divi report, it has no emergency reserve. currently at around 5,000. According to Divi, this development could, among other things, be related to the fact that some clinics initially incorrectly declared the number of their free beds. Instead of “ready-to-use beds”, for which nurses are also available, some have submitted the actual number of beds to the Divi-Register. This has now been corrected, so the number of beds on the record fell in October and November.

Another reason, according to Divi, may be that Nursing staff are absent due to illness and therefore hospitals can accept fewer patients. (dpa / fra)