Germany may run into a shortage of critical medical equipment and hospital capacity even though the country has done relatively well in combating the coronavirus so far, scientists and politicians warned Sunday.
“We can’t rule out we’ll have more patients in need of ventilators than equipment,” Lothar Wieler, president of the public health group, Robert Koch Institute, told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The country “clearly has to acknowledge that capacities might not suffice,” he said.
Wieler has turned more wary of the virus’s spread compared with his statement from about a week ago, when he said he was “optimistic” because trends show the growth in new cases is flattening out in Germany.
Leading politicians in Europe’s biggest economy struck a similar tone. The country needs a strategy to increase capacity and boost central planning because there aren’t enough protection gear, testing or ventilators, the Social Democratic Party’s health-care expert and member of parliament, Barbel Bas, told the same newspaper on Sunday.
Source: Bloomberg
