Newspaperreporting chaos in health authorities
Coronavirusreporting chaos in health authorities
So far, the health authorities have hardly asked for help to find people infected - here is a test drive-in in Berlin.
(Photo: Britta Pedersen / dpa)The authorities are supposed to tell the RKI whether "full contact tracking is guaranteed". So far, less than half of the counties have done this.
A simple guideline applies to the federal and state governments in the fight against Corona: "Complete contact tracking" of infected people is "the basic prerequisite for further opening steps" - this was agreed on 30 April by Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of state. The conference resolution states that since April 24, all health authorities in Germany have been reporting to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) as to whether "they guarantee complete contact tracking, are at risk, or are no longer possible".
In fact, according to information from the Süddeutscher Zeitung , NDR and WDR, less than half of the counties did this by early May. So it is in a situation picture "Corona" from the Ministry of Interior and Health from this week. Thereafter, out of a total of 401 counties, 158 reported that their capacities were sufficient. Only two counties said they needed support for contact tracking. 241 counties have not reported anything.
According to the decision of April 30, the federal states should ensure that the reports are transmitted. However, according to the situation picture Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Brandenburg, Berlin, Lower Saxony and Hamburg did not do this until May 1st. The countries obviously have different opinions about what has been specifically agreed.
Baden-Württemberg said on request that the figures had been reported to the RKI "meanwhile". Lower Saxony says that due to "the very high workload of the local health authorities", the reporting system is "not yet fully established". Other countries said they would not continue to report as long as no problems were in sight. Hamburg explained that there was no general obligation to report. It had already been agreed beforehand that the only need to be reported if there were problems with the contact tracking of the corona infected, said the health authority. The RKI now also says that this is provided for in the planned Infection Protection Act.
Five to twenty contact persons must be telephoned per infected person
The task of the health authorities is to monitor the isolation of infected people and to identify contact persons. This is an "essential element of infection control", according to the federal-state decision. However, the task is labor-intensive. Not only the infected but also all contact persons must be asked to remain in quarantine for 14 days. Since every infected person has an average of five to twenty contact persons who have to be called, the health authorities can quickly reach their capacity limits.
According to the RKI, five state authorities have announced "current or foreseeable capacity bottlenecks". This includes the district of Ilm. The local health authority confirmed that it had asked for support. The reason is the upcoming school examinations. Four doctors and four sisters from the district are concerned with it. Therefore, so-called "containment scouts" would also be used.
They are also already in use in the Harz district in Saxony-Anhalt. The local health department is overworked because the district also houses the central reception center for refugees, which according to the district office has "developed into a hotspot during the coronavirus pandemic". The independent city of Gera has also registered a need for support. Here is the reason that the health department has been increased since the beginning of the pandemic with personnel from other areas of the city administration, but that should now return to the original workplace, the office said. At the same time, it expects that due to the easing decided on May 6th, there will be more contacts "to be followed up in the event of an infection".
In such cases, the Ministry of Health has promised to fund 500 additional "containment scouts", which the RKI will select and allocate to the health authorities. When the RKI advertised the scout positions in March and was targeting students with a gross salary of 2325 euros, more than 11,000 applicants registered. By the middle of this week, 362 of these scouts had already been hired, said the Robert Koch Institute.
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