Harald Mayer, head of the Federal Curia for employed doctors and vice-president of the Austrian Medical Association, said in a broadcast that one group of the population had been forgotten: “Once again, nobody is thinking about the hospital staff.”
While record numbers are currently being reached with the number of infections, according to Mayer, the normal Covid wards are already so busy “that we are already running out of beds and that some of the staff are exhausted and unnerved or infected, quit in rows or are looking for transfers.” The well-being of patients is endangered, doctors and nurses feel abandoned by politicians: “The consequences of the easing have to be paid for by those who have sacrificed themselves for others since the beginning of the pandemic and who have kept our patient care on top despite the crisis mode -Maintain level.”
Mayer appealed to politicians, in particular to the new Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens), to “not only think about the short-term applause” when making decisions, but to question “whether all relaxation really has to be in the spirit of lived health policy solidarity”. In this context, the Federal Curia chairman explicitly called for the reintroduction of “a stricter FFP2 mask requirement, especially indoors”.
Source: Nachrichten
