German hospitals face shortage of beds, staff as virus surges again

FREISING (Germany) • With intensive care beds filling up amid a shortage of healthcare staff, a hospital in Bavaria's Freising town 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 European Union for help.

While the absolute number of patients in intensive care still lies below the peak a year ago, this time around, German hospitals are also facing the double whammy of a shortfall in staff 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 Dr Thomas Marx, medical director at the hospital in Freising, a town of 50,000 inhabitants.

"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.

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

Five of them are Covid-19 patients, all unvaccinated.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says coronavirus deaths in Europe have risen by 5 per cent in the past week, making it the region with the highest increase in fatalities.

In its weekly report issued on Tuesday, the WHO said that 50,000 Covid-19 deaths were recorded worldwide last week, but all regions aside from Europe saw fatalities rise marginally or decline, Xinhua news agency reported.

Europe has recorded 28,304 new deaths in the past week, with a cumulative total of 1.48 million cases.

Of the 3.3 million new Covid-19 cases reported globally, 2.1 million came from Europe.

The countries in Europe with the highest number of new coronavirus cases were Russia (275,579), Germany (254,436) and Britain (252,905), the WHO report said.

The WHO also warned recently that Europe was once again the epicentre of the pandemic, and that half a million people on the continent could die from Covid-19 in the next few months.

As Germany's vaccination rate stagnated at under 70 per cent 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."

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 result to use public transport or go to the office.

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 (means) to get it... 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 Dr 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."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE