Coronavirus: bad news for European countries? Germany is slowly running out of ATI – Coronavirus beds

Official data shows that the number of Covid patients in intensive care units in Germany increased from 267 on September 21 to 3,615 on November 20, a more than 13-fold increase in two months.

Europe’s largest economy has so far gone through a real pandemic compared to neighboring countries. This is partly due to the capacity of ATI with 33.9 beds per 100,000 inhabitants, unlike Italy, for example, which has only 8.6. But CNN writes, the rise in the number of cases has also put pressure on the German health system, and hospitals in some regions are nearing their limits.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, warned on Friday that the system could collapse if the current trajectory continues.

“The number of serious cases in ATI is constantly increasing. The death toll is something that is not really talked about and remains very high,” said Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Michael Oppert, head of the ATI at Ernst von Bergmann hospital in Potsdam, is also worried about the dramatic increase in recent weeks and expects things to get worse.

“We’re not at the top of the wave now, at least as far as I can see,” he told CNN. “And we have capacity for a few more patients, but if this growth remains so rapid, I think our hospital, with over 1,000 beds, will also reach a point where we will have to send patients home or to other hospitals for treatment. “, He says.

After taking into account non-Covid patients, 22,066 ATI beds were filled in the country on November 20, while 6,107 remain vacant. Germany has a reserve of approximately 12,000 ATI beds, including hospital field beds.

Despite the large capacity, Health Minister Jens Spahn warned this month that ATI units could be overwhelmed if the daily infection rate continues to rise to the current level.

This could be bad news for all of Europe. So far, Germany has detected Covid patients from neighboring countries whose health systems were overwhelmed.

During the first wave of the pandemic, between 21 March and 12 April, 232 patients were transferred for treatment to Germany – 44 from Italy, 58 from the Netherlands and 130 from France.

In the fall, North Rhine-Westphalia and the Saarland provided facilities for 36 patients – 3 from the Netherlands, 25 from Belgium and 8 from France.