Berlin, January 23 A hospital in Berlin, Germany, was completely blockaded on the 23rd due to the cluster infection of COVID-19 Variant strains in the hospital, and all patients and medical staff were quarantined.
According to German media reports, 20 people in the hospital have been diagnosed with Variant strains.
According to media reports such as the Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting Corporation and the Berlin Daily Mirror, the cluster infection of Variant strains occurred at Humboldt Hospital Berlin, a subsidiary of Vivantes Medical Group.
As of the afternoon of the same day, 14 patients and 6 staff members of the hospital had been diagnosed with the “B.1.1.7” Variant strain first found in the United Kingdom.
Due to the rising number of confirmed cases, the health department of the Reinkendorf district, where the hospital is located, has imposed a blockade on Humboldt Hospital.
Patients and medical staff in the hospital have been quarantined and new patients have been stopped.
Rascheid, the head of the district’s health department, said that people need to pay attention to the scope of the impact of the cluster infection incident.
He said it was not clear what impact the incident would have on the overall pandemic prevention situation in Berlin.
The number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the number of new deaths announced by the German disease control agency on the 23rd were 16,417 and 879 respectively.
According to the real-time data of Germany’s Time Online, as of 21:00 p.m. local time on the 23rd, Germany has confirmed a total of 21,352 people, 1,794,786 cured and 52,452 deaths.
As of that day, Germany had been vaccinated with 1632,777 doses of the coronavirus and 163,424 people had been vaccinated with a second dose.
In response to the current discussion in German politics about the timetable for “unblocking”, Drosten, the authoritative virologist and director of the Virology Institute of the Charit Medical College in Berlin, expressed his concern about the development of the pandemic in Germany from spring to summer in an exclusive interview with the German media recently.
He said that once the elderly and some high-risk groups have been vaccinated, they will face economic, social, political and even legal pressure to end the pandemic prevention and blockade measures.
If you do so, there will be a large number of new confirmed cases in a short time, he said.
“In the worst case, it will not be 20,000-30,000 new cases a day, but 100,000 new cases.”
Drosten pointed out that although most of the new confirmed cases at this time were young people, and the severity rate was lower than that of the elderly, if the number of infected young people was large, it would still lead to overloading hospital intensive care beds and the death of many patients.
He said that if the number of new confirmed cases can be reduced as much as possible now, the emergence of the above-mentioned “worst situation” can be avoided to some extent.
