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A patient in the intensive care ward of a Bavarian hospital.
Image: dpa
Only ten percent of intensive care beds will be kept free in the future: Doctors fear bottlenecks in the infirmary in a second wave. The president of the German Medical Association warns against the total abandonment of the quota system.
reGerman hospitals are keeping fewer and fewer free beds in their intensive care units for patients who are seriously ill from the new coronavirus, despite the growing number of infections. The Baden-Württemberg state government decided this week that in future only 10 percent of beds should be reserved for these patients instead of 35 percent. Development continued in other federal states. In Berlin, only ten percent of beds have been reserved for Covid patients since June, followed by Lower Saxony in mid-July.
In Bavaria and Brandenburg, hospitals no longer have to keep intensive care beds free for Covid patients since the summer, and Hamburg abolished the quota in August. In early September, Saxony-Anhalt also completely repealed the regulation. In Rhineland-Palatinate alone, hospitals must keep 20 percent of their intensive care beds free because of the crown from spring. There are no plans to change anything, said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health in Mainz.
