Charité’s boss, Kroemer: “Very soon at the limit of what is possible”

The CEO of the Berlin Charité warned in clear words against overloading the clinics. There are not many vacant intensive care beds with enough staff in Germany, he said in the daily topics.

The director general of the Berlin Charité, Heyo Kroemer, has urgently warned against overloading hospitals due to the corona pandemic. “Very soon we will be at the limit of what is possible,” Kroemer said at the daily topics. Of 442 beds in Charité’s intensive care units, 129 are already occupied with corona patients. These patients would have to be cared for very extensively, around 70 percent of them would be artificially ventilated.

“The number of free intensive care beds, which is often reported in Germany, suggests, in my opinion, a wrong fact,” Kroemer said. An intensive care bed can only be considered free if enough equipment and staff are available to care for the patient. However, “there are not many free beds in the Federal Republic” of this type of intensive care beds.

Kroemer said staff were overwhelmed in a way that he thought they couldn’t last long. Many doctors and nurses have been removed from other wards to care for corona patients. In addition, the schedule for other operations has already been reduced to 65 percent of usual.