Austria ( Muhammad Amir Siddique)City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ) expects that hospital capacities will be fully utilized again in the fourth wave of the pandemic. They are prepared there, according to the Favoriten Clinic. “The worst-case scenario is that the fourth wave hits the hospital like the third wave. We reckon that we will need our entire nine-step system again, ”said Hacker to“ Vienna today ”. Alexander Zoufaly, senior physician at the Favoriten Clinic, says we are prepared for it. “We now had a phase, the last three weeks, where a normal ward with non-Covid patients could be used, we had a clear relief. Over the weekend we had 25 recordings with Covid-19 and the second station filled up again in no time. No fully immunized intensive care patients. Zoufaly fears that due to the delta variant, things could continue at a similar pace in autumn. At the moment, however, it is clear that there are few patients who are fully immunized, especially in the intensive care units. “We don’t currently have a patient in the intensive care unit who is double-vaccinated. Every now and then it would happen that fully immunized people end up in the intensive care unit. “It is also to be expected that there will be vaccination breakthroughs. This is completely normal. Ideally, at some point all patients who are being treated as inpatients will be vaccinated – simply because everyone is vaccinated, “said the senior physician, who however emphasized that the number of patients will then be significantly lower,” because the vaccination before the severe course protects. Ten percent double vaccinated in the normal ward. About ten percent of the patients on the normal wards in the Favoriten Clinic are currently double vaccinated. These are people who are often a bit older or have an underlying disease that does not always allow an adequate immune response to the vaccination. In general, however, it has been shown that, due to the progress in vaccination, the patients are younger than in earlier phases of the pandemic.
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