Highest value since mid-May: Once again the number of intensive care patients for Covid 19 hits four digits – Politics

The number of critically ill people being treated with Covid-19 in intensive care units in Germany has risen to 1,000. This emerges from the daily report of the Intensive Care Registry of the German Interdisciplinary Society for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI) and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

This number of patients has not been this high since mid-May. For comparison: in December 2021, approximately 4,900 critically ill COVID-19 patients were treated at the same time, after which values ​​declined with intermittent plateau phases.

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Christian Karaganidis, a member of the federal government’s coronavirus expert council, explained on request that intensive care units are seeing a trend towards increasing the number of new admissions each day and increasing occupancy to 1,000 – “however, the overall increase so far has been moderate.” According to the Scientific Director of the Divi Intensive Care Registry, about 50 percent of patients who require intensive care require respiratory support in the form of oxygen or ventilation. At its peak, before the spread of the omicron variant, it was more than 80 percent.

RKI gave the official nationwide infection rate for seven days on Saturday morning as 696.5. A week ago there were 632.9 new infections within seven days and 100,000 people. However, experts assume that there are many unrecorded cases – due to late registration, transmission problems, and because not all affected people have the PCR test, which is recorded statistically.

Karagiannidis said there is currently a very high infection burden among the population, which has been clearly underestimated over the seven-day course of the infection. For example, samples from wastewater monitoring in individual cities showed a much greater increase in the incidence rate. “At the same time, hospitalizations are increasing, but we don’t know whether Covid-19 is the primary or secondary diagnosis for patients,” says the expert.

According to Karagiannidis, some hospitals reported more pneumonia in normal wards under the influence of omicron subtype BA.5 and subtype BA.4, which have been prevalent for some time. This is consistent with animal studies, which report that the two streaks affect the lungs slightly more than previously dominant subtypes BA.1 and BA.2.

worry about falling

“The spread of the highly contagious omicron subvariant BA.5 is currently canceling the effect of the seasonal summer, so we are seeing a rise in the number of infections in Germany and many other European countries,” explained intensive care physician Stefan Kluge of Hamburg University Hospital. – Eppendorf upon request. He also referred to a large number of unreported cases. In his opinion, the hospital’s burden on critically ill Covid-19 patients “remains moderate”.

However, the main problem for hospitals right now is the relatively high staff loss due to staff infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to Kluge. “Given the current staffing shortage, more beds must be closed again in some hospitals and services must be restricted.” How the virus evolves in terms of potential new variants. “(dpa)