obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011
From: PDX (and now) London, UK
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Everyone continues to ask what Germany is doing well to keep deaths down.
While many of the overarching strategies have been discussed, like extensive testing, case tracking and isolation early, early-on lower age case rates, keeping the vulnerable as safe as possible, and their high numbers of ICU beds (although those will likely come more into play at a later stage).
This is from an article about the need in the UK for more oversight of patients who call in with COVID symptoms but are not severe yet, or enough, to get a ride to A&E.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/fears-britons-self-isolating-covid-19-seek-help-too-late
Covid-19 is said to be mild to moderate in 80% of people, but can cause viral pneumonia. In the most serious cases, the immune system fighting the virus overreacts. If that happens, what is known as a cytokine storm attacks their organs. The individual will need ventilation in hospital to take over their breathing and possibly mechanical support for their heart, liver or kidneys.
People with symptoms at home will not get medical help unless they ask for it, unlike in some other countries, which have testing for people with symptoms and monitoring for them while at home.
Health authorities in the southern German city of Heidelberg have introduced a “corona taxi” service, which allows medical personnel to visit patients with the virus at home and assess their progress. This was introduced after virologists and other doctors recognised that it often comes in two waves and that typically on the eighth day, patients’ health can take a turn for the worse.
Patients with confirmed infections or suspected to have coronavirus are being called on a regular basis by student doctors manning phone lines, and based on their accounts, a taxi crew can then arrange to visit them.
Four of the taxis – small buses usually used for school runs – are constantly travelling around the city visiting patients.
“These daily phone calls and house visits would totally overwhelm the doctors here,” said Uta Merle, a medical director for gastroenterology and infections at Heidelberg University hospital, which is why medical students are being drafted in. Eight hundred have so far volunteered.
Hans-Georg Kräusslich, the head of virology at the hospital, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the visits are necessary because “often patients don’t have the courage to ring up the clinic and don’t actually take their worsening state seriously”.
Maybe other countries are doing this, but it's not being done here.
< Message edited by obvert -- 4/8/2020 7:22:44 PM >
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RE: OT: Corona virus - 
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