Carrying the corona virus to the hospital when visiting the sick? This should not only prevent the mask requirement for visitors. Clinics also continue to have limited visiting hours and visitor numbers.
Erfurt (dpa/th) - In view of the Corona summer wave, hospitals in Thuringia are sticking to certain restrictions on patient visits. This applies, for example, to limiting the maximum number of visitors per patient or visiting times. However, the state hospital company is currently not aware of any strict bans on visits, as in previous pandemic peaks, as its managing director Reiner Poniewaß said. "The clinics do this with a lot of sense of proportion." The proportion of corona-infected clinic patients in Thuringia - with sometimes considerable regional differences - has recently increased continuously, and at the same time the staffing situation is considered tense.
At the Waldklinikum Gera, for example, patients are allowed to receive a maximum of three visitors a day, and visiting times are limited to three hours. At the Jena University Hospital, the Thuringia Clinics in Saalfeld, the Regiomed Clinics in southern Thuringia and the Apolda Hospital, only one visitor per patient is generally allowed for a maximum of two hours. The house in Apolda had recently returned to this upper limit after a temporary relaxation. Visiting hours are limited to two hours a day.
If the corona situation worsens, "then we will also think about tightening the visiting regulations," said a spokeswoman for the Gera forest clinic. In the Thuringia clinics, the existing regulations should initially remain in place, as a spokesman said. Further restrictions are not planned for the time being.
Uwe Koch, Managing Director of the Apolda Hospital, observed that people reacted "very sensibly" to the stricter regulations. The Corona state ordinance stipulates that clinic visitors must wear a surgical or FFP2 mask. However, this arrangement often leads to objections from visitors, said a spokeswoman for the Gera Clinic.
In a number of districts, the number of weekly corona clinic cases per 100,000 inhabitants was recently well over 20 in some cases. These patients are currently mostly not admitted because of a corona infection, but because of other diseases, said Poniewaß. The infection is then only diagnosed in the clinic. The so-called hospitalization incidence is a criterion for the burden on hospitals from the pandemic.
