Mask supply is ordered

"At the moment, we feel that we have a manageable, albeit steady, increase in the number of patients." alexander schmidtke, chief executive officer of the municipal hospital group regiomed, talks about the patients infected with sars-cov-2, the corona patients. Still, he says, the capacities in the regiomed hospitals are sufficient for their care.

A patient died in lichtenfels who had been treated at the hospital there. Managing director robert wieland confirms the death of the company's employees. No further information is available: data protection and the obligation to maintain confidentiality prevent this, and it has also been agreed with the district authorities that regiomed will not disclose any sickness figures.

In the district of coburg, there were 54 infected on tuesday, in the city 24. 117 people are in quarantine. Regiomed employees have also been infected, says chief executive officer alexander schmidtke. But: they were not infected at the workplace. "It all happened in a private environment", emphasizes schmidtke. Because all regiomed employees now wear mouth and nose protection during working hours and strict hygiene rules apply, no employee has yet had to go into quarantine, says the managing director. Whether quarantine or not is decided by the responsible health authorities. "Even in the corona crisis, we must ensure the provision of health care in the region", says schmidtke. "That's why protecting employees is important."

For normal work, the medical fabric mouth and nose masks are sufficient. Only in the intensive care area do they have to work with protective masks, schmidtke emphasizes. He himself can now make sense of the idea that everyone wears a protective mask outdoors. Wearing the so-called FFP masks, however, is exaggerated, he clarifies.

Still enough protective equipment

So far, the regiomed group still has sufficient protective equipment, reports michael musick, the managing director responsible for the company. However, it is difficult to predict when the reordered material will arrive and how much of it there will be, he says. "The problem is the delivery routes." production in asia has restarted, but currently there is only one direct freight flight per week from china to germany. Regiomed also receives support from its neighbors: companies such as brose, HUK coburg, waldrich and haba have donated FFP protection masks or provided them at a purchase price.

Meanwhile, regiomed has daily monitoring of the levels of protective equipment, the number of available beds, covid-19 patients and available staff, schmidtke says – across all facilities. The crisis is currently leaving the group "at formula one speed" growing together. "People help each other where they can."