Number of cases lower, hospitalizations constant – but the problem lies elsewhere

Everyone now knows at least one person who has recently become ill with Covid-19 – although the number of cases has fallen in the past week. The coming autumn wave has made the outlook less rosy for weeks.

Because the situation in the hospitals is already described as “tense”. This is mainly due to the lack of staff. And what does it actually look like abroad?

We clarify the main six points of the current situation:

After the number of cases rose sharply in the first two weeks of October, the curve flattened again a week ago and was only up 7.1 percent from the week before.

This week the BAG even reports a decrease of 16 percent. Is it all over? Barely. We’ll have to wait and see for the next few weeks. Because it remains important: the number of unreported cases is probably high (see point 2). It is therefore still the case that the number of cases is at best an indicator of the current corona situation, but should by no means be considered alone.

The wastewater values ​​also show where the trend in case numbers is heading. If the coronavirus is found there in high concentrations, an increase in the number of cases is to be expected. Eawag’s data showed an upward trend at the end of September, but has since become more of a sideways move. We are still a long way from the values ​​at the beginning of the year, the current situation is comparable to that of the summer wave.

As mentioned above, the number of unreported cases remains very high at 41.1 percent. Because far too few PCR tests are performed, many cases go undetected. Many infected people are satisfied with a rapid antigen test. Experts assume a factor between four and six for the number of unreported cases. So if there were about 30,000 reported cases in the past week, it should really be more from 120,000 to 180,000.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO stated: To get the most accurate picture of the epidemic situation, the positivity rate should be below five percent. We have been well above this value for months.

Hospital admissions have remained almost constant over the past two weeks (this week: +0.9 percent, last week +1.3 percent). That is good news. The current occupancy of Swiss hospitals is 82.3 percent of capacity.

Petra Zalud, media spokeswoman for the Swiss Association for Intensive Care Medicine SGI, writes on request: “The disease course in previously healthy patients appears to be less severe with the currently circulating virus variants, patients with previous illnesses often become as severely ill as before with the other variants.”

Zalud fears that the situation will worsen in the coming weeks. In addition to Covid patients, severe cases of cold-season seasonal flu will lead to more hospitalizations.

On October 24, the intensive care units in Nidwalden (5 beds) and Schaffhausen (6 beds) were fully occupied. However, that could soon change.

The occupancy rate in the Swiss intensive care units is currently 75.5 percent and the number of patients with Covid has increased slightly recently:

The situation in the intensive care unit is sometimes tense. “In mid-October, about 123 of the certified intensive care beds in a total of 30 hospitals could not be operated on,” explains Zalud. The reason for this: lack of staff. Which brings us to point 5.

Because even though the situation in hospitals and intensive care is still manageable. The staff shortage cannot be explained away and can worsen in the short term due to illness. About two weeks ago, the trade association called for immediate measures. Because every month about 300 nurses leave the profession.

When asked, Zalud says: “The situation in the hospitals is tense, mainly due to the persistent and increasing shortage of specialized personnel in the nursing sector, but also in the medical sector.”

More cases of Covid and flu, plus a shortage of health workers. The SGI is therefore looking critically at the coming weeks: “This could lead to non-emergency operations having to be postponed again due to a lack of specialized personnel.”

But the problem isn’t just in intensive care units, it also has consequences: “In many cases, patients cannot be transferred from the ICU to subsequent monitoring or bedside wards because they also struggle with the consequences of the lack of staff.” And finally, due to the Corona regulations, isolated patients create more work in terms of staff, who are short of care in other places.

The infection curves in Switzerland’s neighboring countries are quite similar to ours, with Switzerland lagging a bit. Austria the strongest increase in new cases from mid-September, but seems to have already passed the peak of the autumn wave: daily new infections have been falling again since October 10. The number of cases is also decreasing Germanyin France and Italy the number of new infections has also fallen slightly recently.

However, the measures in all neighboring countries are currently somewhat stricter than in our country. In Germany FFP2 masks have been mandatory on long-distance public transport since October 1, including in hospitals and medical practices. In Austria the mask requirement on public transport is limited to the capital city of Vienna.

In Italy the mask requirement in public transport was abolished at the end of September, but still applies in healthcare institutions. In France wearing a mask is highly recommended on public transport and in hospitals and pharmacies.