An emergency meeting of health delivery officials with Chancellor Angela Merkel has been set for Nov. 16 to discuss how to act since the present partial lockdown has only not decreased, but has increased infections with the COVID-19 virus to an alarming record level of almost 24,000 new infections daily.
Faced with this development and with the fact that there may soon be bottlenecks at hospitals for treating pandemic patients, several national medical associations have issued an appeal to politicians to decree a freeze on all non-emergency surgery and other special treatments, to free thousands of hospital beds and personnel to manage acute and intensive coronavirus care. Apparently, many clinics continue to perform heart and other surgeries motivated by the higher revenue from insurance companies, than to perform additional treatments for pandemic patients. The government should offer financial compensation to clinics to enable them to increase pandemic treatments, the associations demand.
