Last resort: German hospitals sound alarm in pandemic surge

With intensive care beds
filling up and health staff running short, a hospital in Bavaria’s Freising
made an unprecedented decision to transfer a coronavirus patient to northern
Italy for treatment.

Through the highs and lows spanning 18 months of the pandemic, Germany had on
many occasions taken in patients from neighbouring countries as hospitals
elsewhere ran out of space.

But a fourth ferocious wave has sent infections to record highs in
Europe’s biggest economy, putting hospitals in parts of the country under
immense strain and forcing some to look elsewhere in the EU for help.

While the absolute number of patients in intensive care still lies below
the peak a year ago, this time around, hospitals are also ailing from the
double whammy of a shortfall in personnel that has seriously hampered their
ability to cope.

“Last week, on Wednesday or Thursday, we had to transfer a patient by
helicopter to Merano,” said Thomas Marx, 43, medical director at the hospital
in Freising, a town with 50,000 inhabitants that is about 350 kilometres (220
miles) away by road.

“We had no more capacity to receive them, and the surrounding Bavarian
hospitals were also full,” he said.

The hospital also had to send another patient to another Bavarian town
Regensburg over the weekend.

“We are at the limits of our capacity, which is why we have to resort to
these means,” he said.

Marx’s service is handling 13 intensive care cases at the moment, three
more than it has capacity for.

Five of them are coronavirus patients, all of whom are unvaccinated.

With Germany’s vaccination rate stagnating at under 70 percent in recent
weeks, top health officials have pleaded for more to get the jab to stem the
surge in infections.

Chancellor Angela Merkel made a new plea on Wednesday for the unvaccinated
to get jabbed, saying “when enough people are vaccinated, that is the way out
of the pandemic”.

In a bid to get more to take the jab, Germany’s parliament is poised to
vote through new regulations for more curbs on the unvaccinated.

Under proposals drafted by the three parties in talks to form Germany’s
new government, unvaccinated people will soon have to produce a negative test
to use public transport or go to the office.

– ‘Incredibly frustrated’ –

At the intensive care unit of Munich Clinic Schwabing, senior doctor
Niklas Schneider voiced frustration over vaccine resistance in some quarters.

“I find it really astonishing that vaccination is not accepted by the
masses even though we have the possibility to get it. It is not completely
understandable to me that so many people are allowing themselves to be misled
by some horror stories about vaccines,” he said.

Like the hospital in Freising, the Munich clinic is at full capacity.

“The team is holding on, but we are incredibly frustrated… because at
the end of the day we are the last resort for everything that is wrong with
society as a whole,” said Schneider.

“The sick people who come to us, who are in mortal danger, we have to
treat them, they need help. It doesn’t matter if they were previously anti-
Corona, anti-vaccine or double-vaccinated, although we don’t have any of the
latter in the ward.”

Besides the relatively low vaccine takeup compared to other parts of
western Europe, health staff also complain that more should also have been
done to bolster their capacity.

Only one in four German hospitals are able to maintain a regular intensive
care service at the moment, said Spiegel magazine. Many others say that
beyond demand, a major problem is an acute shortage of trained personnel.

Already a chronic problem before the pandemic, long hours, low pay and
stress during the coronavirus crisis have only served to put even more people
off a job in the healthcare sector.

Schneider noted that there are now far fewer health workers than in the
first wave.

Likewise, his colleague in Freising voiced “incomprehension” over the
latest crisis.

“I admire the calmness with which the staff operate, with which we face
this new challenge with such professionalism,” Marx said.

“But I also know that some people, inside, are boiling, even if they don’t
let it spill out.”

AFP