The health department bundles its forces in a building of the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg. More contacts from corona infected people should be tracked every day.
Long distances, accommodation in the container and difficult arrangements: the working conditions of the people who work in the tracking of coronavirus infections have recently been anything but ideal. That should get better now. The health department is pooling its forces on Heidenhofstrasse in Freiburg in a building belonging to the Fraunhofer Institute.
86 people can be used there in the contact follow-up – a further increase is possible, it is said. As of this week, 26 administrative employees and soldiers of the Franco-German Brigade started their work. “Supporting the health department is very important to us,” said Karsten Buse, head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques. “Our team pulled out all the stops to get the building ready for handover earlier than planned and, together with the district office, ensured that the necessary IT connection was created in all rooms within a very short time,” said Buse. District Administrator Dorothea Störr-Ritter thanked them for the pragmatic and unbureaucratic solution. An increase in staff in the health department failed in the past not least due to the lack of space, said the district administrator. The building was ready for occupancy within three weeks. She thanked everyone involved for this effort. “This will help us to get the corona pandemic under control,” said Störr-Ritter.
Infection numbers are stagnating, but at too high a level
The head of the health department Oliver Kappert delivered a current status report: The number of new infections every day is stagnating. “Unfortunately, however, the level is far too high,” said Kappert. He hopes that the working conditions in the new building will give his teams greater effectiveness: With full staff deployment, a 7-day incidence of 150 cases per 100,000 inhabitants can be processed. The Chancellor had declared 50 cases as the target and announced that the health authorities would then get the situation under control again with the contact tracking. Kappert said that they had agreed with the district administrator to consciously build in a safety buffer. The 7-day incidence in the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district was 101 on Friday evening and 89 in the city of Freiburg.
Kappert pointed out that the corona infections are spreading in all classes of society, but increasingly in groups that are more susceptible to severe disease. The outbreak in the nursing homes in Löffingen and Ehrenkirchen had slowed down significantly, but it was “not quite over yet”. As a rule, it takes three to five weeks for a corona outbreak in a nursing home to be completely contained, according to Kappert.
“It is urgently necessary that we come down with the overall number of cases. We are not yet over the mountain,” said the health department manager. Together with the district administrator, he appealed to all citizens to refrain from traveling in view of the upcoming Christmas days, to keep their distance and not do everything that is allowed. Otherwise, the two fear an increase in the number of cases of infection after the holidays in the new year.
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