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Shortly before the announcement of a new closure, the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) published a “Position Paper of Medical Professionals and Scientists on Adjusting Strategies to Cope with the Pandemic” on Wednesday. At the press conference where the document was presented, KBV chief Andreas Gassen said: “A general lockdown regulation is neither desirable nor enforceable.”
The opinion was prepared by the KBV together with virologists Hendrik Streeck and Jonaas Schmidt-Chanasit. Numerous medical associations are listed as sponsors, including the professional association of pediatricians, the Federal Chamber of Psychotherapists, the Association of General Practitioners and the National Association of Specialists in Germany, which represents 29 associations.
However, one of the specialized medical associations represented by the umbrella association has now distanced itself from the document: the Professional Association of German Anesthesiologists (BDA) criticized the KBV statement on Thursday, according to which a blockade is not in parts the correct remedy. for the corona pandemic.
According to a statement from the association, BDA President Götz Geldner says that there is currently no alternative to significantly restricting contacts and thus the possibility of spreading the infection. So far, all the other steps have not been effective enough. Much more than in the spring, it is now a question of avoiding a collapse of all intensive care medicine in Germany, which would mean many deaths: “As a society and healthcare system, we cannot stand idly by with the avalanche, which soon it could be solved, “Geldner said.
Responsive and proportionate shutdown
According to its own information, the BDA has more than 20,000 members who “are currently working at the forefront of the pandemic in intensive care medicine,” the statement said. The association did not endorse the KBV position paper and had no prior knowledge of the document. The sister company of the BDA, the “German Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine” (DGAI) shares this opinion.
Also, at a news conference Thursday, intensive care doctors described the closure as sensible and proportionate. The situation in German intensive care units can still be controlled, said Uwe Janssens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi). Germany has an excellent healthcare system and, compared to other European countries, much greater capacities. But in a few weeks this could change dramatically with exponential growth in new infections. Divi had not signed the KBV position paper.
