Unvaccinated people make up around a quarter of the adult population, but four out of five Covid patients in intensive care units are not vaccinated. The risk of a severe course is significantly higher for those who have not been vaccinated.
Berlin – On Thursday, the Federal Statistical Office confirmed what experts had suspected for a long time: the corona pandemic led to excess mortality in Germany between March 2020 and November 2021. The current figures from the Robert Koch Institute show that unvaccinated people in particular have to reckon with a severe course. Although statistically they only make up a small part of the population, an above-average number of unvaccinated people are in intensive care units.
Vaccinated or unvaccinated: these are the patients in intensive care units in Germany
In all of Germany there are currently (as of December 10, 10:05 p.m.) only 2242 intensive care beds for adults available, as the DIVI intensive register shows. This corresponds to a free bed share of around ten percent. Even at values below 15 percent it becomes problematic, as the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) explains. Because on average, an intensive care unit has ten to twelve beds. A capacity of ten percent therefore corresponds one Free bed so that emergencies such as heart attacks or accidents can be dealt with quickly. Corona patients are a particular challenge due to their long hospital stay and the complicated ventilation treatment. The limiting factor is not the beds themselves, but the staff, as former Health Minister Jens Spahn made clear in his last press conference.
Around three quarters (75.5 percent) of the population between the ages of 18 and 59 are vaccinated, and a quarter (24.5 percent) are unvaccinated. However, the Covid patients in this age group who end up in intensive care units are, according to calculations by the ZDF 84.3 percent unvaccinated – that means four out of five people. Those who encounter the virus without vaccination have a 17 times higher chance of getting seriously ill. If it was a drawing, 17 tickets would have the name of an unvaccinated person and only one would have the name of a vaccinated person.
A comparison of the most recently published hospitalization incidences (week from November 22nd to November 28th) makes the danger situation even clearer. Unvaccinated, elderly people are at greatest risk of ending up in hospital. In unvaccinated over 60-year-olds came According to RKI information 41.4 people per 100,000 inhabitants came to the clinic within seven days. In vaccinated people over 60 years of age, the value was 6.7.
Why vaccinated people can also come to the intensive care unit
Not only unvaccinated people are in intensive care units. Since the protective effect of the vaccination is not 100 percent, vaccinated people can also have a more severe course. The proportion of those vaccinated in intensive care units is even expected to increase. From a statistical point of view, this is only logical, as a larger proportion of the population is vaccinated. If one day, theoretically, one hundred percent of the population were vaccinated, only those who had been vaccinated would be in the intensive care unit – albeit significantly fewer people overall than would be the case without a vaccination. The number of people vaccinated in intensive care units is not an argument against the effectiveness of the vaccination. The science journalist Mai Thi Nguyen Kim draws an impressive comparison in her video “The vaccination is ok”. To say: “Goalkeepers are useless, because 99 percent of the goals had a goalkeeper” is roughly the same logic.
There have been so many vaccination breakthroughs since the beginning of the year
Since around the beginning of the year (January 27), 0.6 percent (362,130) of the total of 57.6 million fully vaccinated people had a breakthrough vaccination. This term describes those cases in which a fully vaccinated person becomes infected and shows symptoms despite being vaccinated. Very few people with a breakthrough vaccination were admitted to the intensive care unit. In the period from November 8 to December 5, zero percent (zero of six cases) of patients with breakthrough vaccination among 12 to 17-year-olds received intensive care. In the 18- to 59-year-old age group, it was 16.8 percent (105 of 626 cases). The older the patient, the higher the risk: among those over 60, 41.1 percent of people with a breakthrough vaccination came to the intensive care unit (480 of 1168 cases). Most of the people (68 percent) who died between February 1 and December 5 after a breakthrough vaccination were 80 years or older.
The RKI explains this high proportion of older people vaccinated in intensive care units with the decline in vaccination protection in this age group. Because when the vaccine was available for the first time, older people were initially given preference. In order to guarantee vaccination protection and to be prepared against Omikron, virologists recommend a booster vaccination. The bottom line is that the RKI figures show that vaccination significantly reduces the risk of a severe course.
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