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The tenor is not that new. We’ve been talking about the goal of the endemic for a long time – in which people who have been immunized come into contact with the virus again and again and maintain their immune protection without serious illnesses occurring. Cases of infection will then no longer lead to the risk of hospitals being overloaded. At the moment, however, the basic immunity in the population is probably not sufficient to suddenly be able to risk a very strong virus circulation. It is therefore too early to spread the message that we can all become infected now. If you are boosted and not a high-risk patient for this disease, you personally do not need to be very afraid of a severe course in the next few months. The risk there is extremely low. Nevertheless, at the moment every avoided infection makes a lot of sense for all of us, since we still have millions of vulnerable or unvaccinated people among us who we can also infect as well-protected vaccinated people. In addition, the increase is extremely fast and it worries me that the number of infections could skyrocket so quickly in the next few weeks that it is unpredictable what impact this will have on hospital operations.
How is the situation with you at the moment?
Our impression is that we are between the waves. Many Delta Wave patients have left the hospital. Our normal ward is two-thirds full, and the intensive care ward is similar. Overall, however, the number of inpatient Covid cases in Hesse has only fallen by a third compared to the delta peak – a difficult starting position for the next wave. In the meantime, we have not been able to return to regular operations. In order to be able to catch up on postponed treatments and to relieve employees, we would have needed a longer time with fewer Covid cases. We continue to put off these problems. The first patients with omicron infections are currently arriving, but most of them have mild courses because they have basic immunization or are in the hospital for another illness and only tested positive by chance – a known effect with very high incidences. Some of the patients have no symptoms at all, but must be treated by us to protect against infection. Given the small number of cases, I cannot yet make any statement as to how severe the disease with omicron is. There are still too few patients who have been with us for too short a time. The deterioration usually only sets in after eight or nine days. In Darmstadt we have been seeing a very strong increase in incidence for a week. We’ll know more in two weeks.
But most patients have a mild course of Covid right now?
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