Corona Crisis: The numbers that really matter
2021-02-14: ECLS turnaround
2021-02-07: Rate now slowly increasing to 1,5-2,0%
2021-01-31: Decline in Covid-19 beds still only at a -1% rate
2021-01-24: Despite fewer new infections, intensive care still high
2021-01-17: Still waiting for turn around in death figures
2021-01-10: The turning point! Proceed with fingers crossed!
2021-01-03: For the first time more than 50% of ECLS beds are used
2020-12-27: Almost 70% of all beds are now COVID-19 cases
2020-12-20: Hospitals start to switch to a “Corona Only” strategy
2020-12-13: New strict lockdown starting 2020-12-16
Early on when the corona pandemic did start in China, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) did start to build a dashboard to monitor the number of infected cases and the number of patients that died from the disease.
The numbers are certainly taken with great care, but as soon as the virus spread outside China mainland, we saw drastic differences between the number of infected and the number of dead, i.e., as of 30.3.2020, 20:00, in Germany 560 out of 63.929 died, which is a rate of 0,876%, whereas in Italy 11.591 dead were counted out of 97.689, which is a rate of 11,87%.
What is obvious, is that neither the medical treatment is so much worse in Italy nor the age structure is so much different from Germany. As testing procedures and testing rates may vary vastly between countries, the number of affected people is only a proxy of what your problem really is.
Sad as it is, we will see people dying from the disease, but the catastrophe really starts, when the medical system is overwhelmed from people who need intensive care, and doctors need to triage, who will get treatment, and who will be “left alone dying”, as it dramatically happened in Italy and Spain.
Germany has a register of Intensive and Emergency Care (DIVI), which shows the availability of intensive care beds, ECLS (Extracorporeal Life Support) capabilities and the number of currently ventilated corona patients.
Monitoring these figures allows to really judge to what extend, the medical system is still able to manage the corona crisis. Here are the figures:
As these figures will emerge over time, we will see how well the German medical system can cope with the crisis and whether or not the strict lock-down may be released step by step.
Stay home and stay healthy!
