NOf course, there is also good news in this pandemic. The number of infected people who had to be admitted to hospital with severe symptoms had already declined in the days before the holidays, says doctor Cihan Çelik, who is on duty in the normal Covid ward of the Darmstadt Clinic on Christmas Day. Overall, the situation relaxed a little at Christmas, reports the senior doctor. And because the patients in the current fourth wave tend to be younger, they can be discharged from the normal ward more quickly.
But that’s not all. All beds in the hospital’s intensive care unit are still occupied. There, the reduced age of the sick has the opposite effect, the younger patients lie there longer because they have more reserves and their bodies wrestle longer with the pathogen. All in all, however, the following applies: “The positive effects of the vaccination are clearly noticeable,” says Çelik. “Despite a record incidence in Hesse, the number of hospitalizations is around half as high as at the height of the second wave.”
Spahn’s prognosis is not confirmed
Not only has the nationwide seven-day incidence been falling for a few days. Before Christmas it had reached 280.3 cases per 100,000 population – much less than a month ago when the incidence had reached almost 500. The number of corona patients who have to be treated in intensive care units is also falling across the country. The clinics reported a total of 4201 Covid-19 patients to the intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) on Christmas Day – about 700 seriously ill fewer than around St. Nicholas.
This means that one of the last forecasts made by the Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU), who recently left office, has not been confirmed. At the beginning of December – a few days before Spahn handed over the ministry to his successor Karl Lauterbach (SPD) – Spahn said: “The situation in the intensive care units will reach its sad climax around Christmas.” The hospitals are currently treating around 1500 seriously ill Covid patients less than at the preliminary peak of the pandemic about a year ago. At that time, the intensive care registry showed 5,745 Covid 19 patients in the intensive care units.
Thomas Lauer is on duty a good two hours’ drive west of Darmstadt on Christmas Day. The 30-year-old intensive care nurse works as a team leader in one of two intensive care units at the Brothers Hospital in Trier. “We can use 20 beds, two are blocked because there is no staff for them,” says Lauer. “Of the 20 beds, 17 are currently occupied.” But only one of them has Corona. The man was moved from another state to the city in Rhineland-Palatinate. And not even in the short term. Lauer says: “He has been here for 18 days.” In the intensive care unit 1D, the situation at Christmas is “quite stable and even a little quieter than in the past few weeks”.
Constant load
There are other reasons why the station is still well filled. Even without Corona there are always emergencies, people fall at home and are seriously injured, others suffer a stroke. The burden for the carers is “consistently high” over the holidays, says Lauer. “In the early shift, we have nine colleagues on duty in the nursing department; in the afternoon there are eight.” On average, each nurse looks after two patients at the same time.
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