As far as the situation in the intensive care units in the hospitals in the Main-Rhn region is concerned, little has changed compared to last week. “The trend in intensive care units with Covid patients is still around 40 percent,” says medical director and hospital coordinator Dr. Michael Mildner in conversation on Tuesday afternoon.
For comparison: the previous week, 40 percent of the intensive care beds were also occupied by Covid patients at the same time. He currently has nine vacant intensive care beds with ventilation options for the entire Main-Rhn region. Of the total of 112 available intensive care units, 39 are currently occupied with Covid patients.
Intensive care units in Schweinfurt fully utilized
Patients are currently being transferred from Schweinfurt to the surrounding clinics in Bad Neustadt and Wrzburg. “Otherwise there would be no more intensive care bed in the city of Schweinfurt,” says Dr. Mildner. In the Rhn-Grabfeld district, the occupancy rate was just the lowest. “In Bad Neustadt three intensive care beds are free for Covid patients, in Bad Kissingen one intensive care bed. The situation in the Habergen, however, is more tense.” There is currently no free intensive care bed, “says Dr. Mildner.
“We are still dealing with a shortage of intensive care beds.” This is due to the fact that you have to serve two groups of patients. “Both the Covid patients and the urgent and emergency intensive care patients must be treated at the moment.” As before, all postponed operations were still frozen until January 10th by decision of the government of Lower Franconia.
Possible admission of patients from the Upper Palatinate
“There are always bottlenecks somewhere,” says Dr. Midlner. On the other hand, the printing pressure has changed. This is currently decreasing a bit and there is some relief in the overall occupancy of Covid patients in the region. “We currently have almost 20 percent less total occupancy with Covid patients and have gone down from 205 to 165.”
This is one of the reasons why the application for a patient admission from the Upper Palatinate is currently in the room. “Because Regensburg cannot absorb anything, it is quite possible that a patient will come to Wrzburg or Bad Neustadt for treatment.” This is a critical patient for whom artificial ventilation is no longer sufficient and therefore has to be connected to a heart-lung machine.
Omikron variant worries experts
In the medium term, the hospital coordinator expects the situation in the intensive care units to ease, but in the long term he is concerned about the new virus variant Omikron. “We will certainly get evidence of Omikron in our area in the foreseeable future. The first case with the new variant was confirmed in Wrzburg today. At the moment, however, we are mainly fighting with infections that can be traced back to Delta.” We have to be precise watch what happens over the Christmas days and with the “strollers”. “
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