DThe German Hospital Association (DKG) called for the 7-day morbidity rate of COVID-19 infection to cease to be a benchmark for the pandemic. “Politicians must ultimately take action and define a series of indicators,” DKG boss Gerald Gaß told the German Editor Network (RND). “It is impossible that the Robert Koch Institute is sitting on all these data without making any new recommendations. We are still only talking about incidence.”
Federal and state politicians from all sides have recently publicly opposed the use of morbidity as the main benchmark.Federal Minister of Health Jens Spann (CDU) specifically mentioned the current high vaccination rate. Higher morbidity rates will not overload the health system so quickly.
“It’s about people’s acceptance”
The person responsible for observing the infection process Robert Koch Institute (RKI) hopes to adhere to the morbidity rate as a benchmark for corona measures to a large extent. “This is incomprehensible to me,” said DKG boss Gaß. After all, this is about “maintaining public acceptance of coronavirus measures.”
The question is how other measures affect the incidence value. For example, Gaß assumes that the new mandatory testing for returning travelers will lead to an increase in the incidence, because more testing is just being done. He told RND that these developments must be properly categorized, such as comparison with the ratio of positive test results.
DKG came up with a concept to create greater transparency by mixing different indicators. According to the information provided by RND, the hospital representative has a matrix in his mind, which is differentiated by age and combines key data such as infection status, testing, vaccination status, and hospital occupancy rate.
The 7-day morbidity rate is just one of a total of twelve indicators. Other key data include the positive test rate of Covid-19 patients, vaccination rate and clinic occupancy rate.
“Through this matrix, it is easy to understand the current pandemic situation at a glance, and what trends and connections exist,” Gaß told RND. For example, people can quickly see from the table whether elderly people who come to the clinic again for vaccination because of reduced vaccination protection.
