Not only is there no current pandemic plan, but the capacity of intensive care beds is also unclear. This is shown by an audit report, which accuses Lauterbach’s ministry of failings.
The Federal Audit Office believes that the Federal Ministry of Health is inadequately prepared for a future pandemic. This is the result of a report by the Court of Auditors that the Bundestag’s Budget Committee received by letter on Wednesday. “t-online” was the first to report on this. The letter is also available to the German Press Agency. The report, entitled “Federal Ministry of Health is not adequately prepared for future pandemics,” states that the number of physically available intensive care beds is continuously decreasing. There is also no new national pandemic plan.
According to the Federal Audit Office, funds distributed to the federal states for the construction of intensive care beds “should have mathematically led to an increase in capacity of around 13,700 intensive care beds”. However, since October 2020, the number of beds ready for use and available for short-term use has been falling due to a lack of nursing staff.
How many intensive care beds are there?
The Court of Auditors found that the ministry led by Karl Lauterbach (SPD) was unable to reliably quantify the number of intensive care beds actually available in hospitals. This is important for preparing for future pandemics. “This means that a key feature of adequate pandemic preparedness is missing,” the Court of Auditors concluded. However, preparing for a pandemic is not the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Health, according to the auditors.
According to the report, the national pandemic plan has not yet been fundamentally revised. Since March 2020, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has supplemented the plan published in 2017 to prepare for an influenza pandemic with so-called Covid-19 strategy papers. “However, a fundamental revision is still pending,” it says. In addition, the Federal Audit Office is sticking to its assessment that the corona pandemic must be dealt with rigorously.
Source: Stern
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