From last Christmas, one in four corona intensive care patients has died

The increase in new infections is stretching the intensive care units to their limits. New data from the FOPH now show that one in four corona patients who were in intensive care has died in the past eight months.

The medical staff of the hospitals have been running at their limits for weeks. The reason for this is the high number of hospitalisations of corona patients. The situation in the intensive care units (ICU) is particularly tense. New data from the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) show the stress under which hospital staff are working.

Between last December and August of this year, 1,055 people infected with corona have had to be treated in an intensive care unit of a Swiss hospital. Of these, 287 people have died, i.e. just over a quarter (27.2%). At the request of CH Media, the FOPH confirms a corresponding report in the "NZZ am Sonntag".

Half of IPS patients over the age of 80 died
According to the FOPH, a total of 1,175 IPS stays were counted from 23 December to 22 August. The outcome of 120 people is unknown, however. A more detailed breakdown of the 1,055 IPS patients whose outcome is known shows how the chance of survival depends on age.

The number of corona patients in the ICU wards has been high for weeks.

For example, around 51% in the group of people over 80 have died, and almost 39% in the 70 to 79-year-old age group. But even among the 50- to 59-year-olds, one in seven has died, while 12.3% deaths were recorded in the age group 40 to 49.

The figures of the Federal Office of Public Health come from the Sentinel hospital surveillance. The FOPH specifies that the data does not show the number of deaths in the intensive care units, but the number of deaths of people who needed intensive care at least once. Whether a person died in the ICU or whether he/she left the ICU and later died, is not known to the FOPH, according to its own information.