BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – In view of the skyrocketing number of new corona infections, intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis is now observing a clear “omicron effect” in intensive care units. Although the hospitalization rate is currently still “acceptable”, the high incidences are now also increasingly evident in the hospitals, said the scientific director of the Divi intensive care register on Friday in Berlin. For about seven to ten days, there has been a “sideways movement in new admissions, towards a trend that is now slightly up again”.
Karagiannidis said the most important questions to ask are what is the burden of the disease with the omicron variant, what is the main diagnosis that brings the patient to the hospital and “how many of them really have a respiratory problem, so pneumonia?” The expert referred to the so-called syndromic monitoring of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), through which one knows how many patients with respiratory diseases one has. The proportion of those who are ventilated is extremely high. The proportion of those who do not need to be ventilated is currently 20 percent, explained Karagiannidis.
The intensive care doctor also warned: “We should not forget that Covid is not just a lung disease, but a systemic disease that affects the vessels in particular.” In the near future one has to pay very close attention to the proportion of those who do not need breathing support. Karagiannidis warned that one had to prepare as well as possible for the coming winter. “I’m more afraid of the coming winter than this one.” But he was “in good spirits” that this would succeed with Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and RKI boss Lothar Wieler./sam/jjk/faa/DP/ngu