Clinics in Salzburg: “We’re going against the wall”
Status: 11/16/2021 4:54 p.m.
The corona situation in Austria is becoming more and more tense. The state of Salzburg in particular is overburdened. Doctors are calling for a lockdown and preparing a triage system.
A lockdown for unvaccinated people has been in effect in Austria since Monday. But is that enough in the fight against the pandemic? The situation in the clinics is particularly tense in the Austrian state of Salzburg. The state clinics put together a six-person triage team because treatment of all patients according to strict standards can soon no longer be guaranteed. Triage means that medical professionals must decide who to help first due to scarce resources.
“It’s a dramatic situation, but we’re not there yet,” said the spokesman for the Salzburg State Clinics, Wolfgang Fürweger, to the Reuters news agency. “But we want the population to die by this point and warn politicians that we will hit the wall.”
Incidence in Salzburg at 1500
In response to the call for help from the clinic operator with its four hospitals, Salzburg’s head of state Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP) announced relief measures. Among other things, some corona patients are to be accommodated in centers for medical rehabilitation.
With more than 1,500 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants, Salzburg currently has the highest seven-day incidence of deaths among the Austrian federal states. Upper Austria follows closely behind with a value of more than 1400.
Reacted too late? Austria’s Chancellor Schallenberg has come under fire.
Image: dpa
Is there a “general lockdown” coming?
Walter Hasibeder, President of the Society for Anesthesiology, Resuscitation and Intensive Care Medicine (ÖGARI), described the situation in the intensive care units in individual federal states as “very, very tense” and “particularly bad”. He briefly calls for a “general lockdown” for Upper Austria and Salzburg. Salzburg is particularly burdened.
The conservative-green federal government is increasingly criticized for having reacted too late to the fourth corona wave. Doctors have been warning against overload in the intensive care units for weeks. A nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated people has been in effect since Monday. However, experts fear that this will not be enough and are calling for a lockdown for everyone.