Covid: German air force called in to transfer ill patients as hospitals run out of ICU beds
The German air force is to help transfer seriously ill Covid patients as parts of the country run out of intensive care beds amid in sharp rise in cases.
Hospitals in southern and eastern regions of Germany are struggling with an influx of Covid-19 patients amid a surge in infections as the government warned the situation in the country is more serious now than at any point in the pandemic.
German news agency dpa reported that a Luftwaffe A310 medevac plane will fly seriously ill patients from the southern town of Memmingen to North Rhine-Westphalia state on Friday afternoon.
Health Minister Jens Spahn urged Germans to reduce their contact with other people to curb the spread of the virus as 76,414 confirmed cases were reported on Thursday. A further 357 deaths from Covid-19 were reported by the Robert Koch Institute, taking the total since the start of the outbreak to 100,476.
“The situation is dramatically serious, more serious than it’s been at any point in the pandemic,” he told reporters in Berlin.
Germany's growing Covid crisis comes as a new variant discovered in southern Africa has been identified.
Flights coming from South Africa will only be able to carry German citizens, and travellers will need to go into quarantine for 14 days whether they are vaccinated or not as of Friday as the government acted to keep the variant from Germany's borders.
The southern state of Bavaria announced on last week that it is cancelling all Christmas markets this year, and closing bars and clubs for three weeks.
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On Monday, Mr Spahn said: “By the end of this winter pretty much everyone in Germany...will have been vaccinated, recovered or died”.
Germany is not the only European country struggling to manage high Covid rates.
Several European nations report hospitals at breaking point, while others are reinforcing strict measures. Austria went back into a nationwide lockdown on Monday, with mandatory vaccinations to be enforced from February, a move that some German politicians have suggested, either for specific professions or for the population as a whole.