Corona explosion: intensive care units soon at the limit

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The situation in hospitals is becoming increasingly dramatic. For the first time since yesterday, more than 3,000 patients are undergoing Covid treatment. 432 have to be treated in an intensive care unit. Resources have long since become scarce. A collapse is feared by many experts.

Since yesterday, not a single intensive care bed is free in the state hospital of Hohenems (Vorarlberg). New patients are immediately diverted to Feldkirch. The problem: it is already the second fully occupied hospital in the Ländle. Dornbirn is also at its limit.

More than three quarters of Vienna’s intensive care beds are full
In Vienna only 35 of 150 intensive care beds are currently free, with two to three new patients being added daily. “The situation is quite critical, so Lydia burner K?nge of the Viennese health group. Originally there had been 400 normal beds, but now 531 people are in hospital, and the capacities are constantly being expanded. If the lockdown “does not bring about any improvement by the end of the coming week, things could also become very tight in Vienna”. More and more hospitals even have to postpone operations, now also in Lower Austria.

Private hospitals must help the public ones
Help. A call for help already came from Salzburg. If it continues like this, the system would reach its limits on November 10th. Now people are resorting to unaccustomed means: The state is cooperating with private hospitals. Here, plannable operations are to be carried out in order to keep vital capacities free.

Alarm also in Tirol: Here the intensive care beds are already occupied to 83%.

The big problem was foreseeable. Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was not the only one who warned: “If more than 6,000 infections per day persist, the hospital beds will run out. Background: Five percent of these patients end up in intensive care. On average, they occupy a bed there for almost 13 days.