Source: CCTV News Client
According to German media reports on the 25th local time, the third wave of the epidemic in Germany is still ongoing. Currently, more than 5,000 new crown patients in the country require intensive care treatment. Although Germany has sufficient medical resources, medical staff are reaching their physical and mental limits.
It is understood that Germany has about 10,000 intensive care beds available for use in emergencies, but the shortage of medical staff is serious. Epidemic hotspots in Thuringia and Saxony, as well as large cities such as Cologne, Leipzig and Munich, have already encountered difficulties as a result. Valles, director of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at the University Hospital of Cologne, said in an interview with German media that day that the hospital's 24 intensive care beds originally provided for cardiac surgery patients have now been allocated 10 for severe COVID-19 patients. This has forced some heart bypass and valve surgeries to be postponed.
At the same time, because the third wave of severely ill patients had milder symptoms than the first and second waves, the average time in intensive care was longer, which also placed a huge burden on nursing staff. According to statistics from the German Intensive Care Association, an increasing number of German regions are running out of available intensive care beds. On April 16, five intensive care patients from Thuringia were flown by helicopter to the intensive care units in Hamburg, Bad Kissingen, Wolfsburg and Osnabrück. Bauer, director of intensive care medicine at the University Hospital Jena in Thuringia, said in an interview with reporters: "We have to make such a coordinated transfer, and the hospital has reached its limit." The average age of the 30 critically ill patients with COVID-19 in his charge is 50 years old. In this regard, Ball believes that this shows that the vaccination work has produced results, and the age of severely ill patients has begun to decrease. He said: "We need to work overload, and we are also actively mobilizing ordinary nursing staff who volunteer to provide services in the intensive care unit. Since last week, the Bundeswehr has also begun to provide support for us." (Headquarters reporter Ruan Jiawen)
