imagine: It is epidemic, but none has the Virus. If you listen in Warsaw, it is reminiscent of the needle in the haystack: None that I know of someone who is infected, not even the most heard of a case somewhere in the circle. However, Corona has the political life in a tight grip.
press conferences of the Minister of health, shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister, were for the Ritual. Basic melody: We have a thing much better than the other. In the Background, huge graphics. Long bar for Germany or the UK, tiny for one’s own country. Poland: 200 infections on one Million people, Germany in 1593, France, 2265 – so it was in April.
“If you ask Donald Trump, whether he has the Virus in the handle, it will affirm it also, though, the situation is disastrous”, says in a DW interview, the doctor Andrzej Sosnierz, once-in-chief of the state health insurance and now a member of the government group in the Sejm. Criticism from the own ranks is not uncommon.
Less
Sosnierz Infected in the East doubts that Poland is particularly well by the pandemic. The results were, despite the harsh measures, comparable with Sweden, with its liberal “Corona-prevention policy”. Anyway, comparisons with the West are out of place in Europe.
The benchmark was of the East, and not even here in Poland it was particularly good. “The average rate in Eastern Europe is 27 Deaths to a Million people, in Western Europe, 340-370. With us, you is 26, which is low in comparison with Italy, but not if we compare ourselves with Slovakia (5).”
The significant differences between the East and the West puzzles over. Sosnierz believed that compulsory vaccination could play a role, especially against tuberculosis, which is practiced in the East as in the West, until today still routinely. Meanwhile, in the world is explored, whether the TB vaccination, also strengthens defenses against Corona.
another hypothesis is that the climate is important, and people are exposed to in the East, much more frequent respiratory tract infections, including many of the “old” corona virus, which would mean that you have better defenses.
But what infections relates to the number of “active” Corona, i.e., potentially the cases of infectious, Poland, Germany overhauled now officially. Because the daily reported death – such as new infection cases in Poland remain for weeks in a stable (300 to 400 new infections/day), while they decreased in Germany more and more. Whether Poland, as is often assumed, has the peak of the epidemic before, but is ultimately unclear. Because the country is testing little.
To a few Tests
Long the already low test capacities were not fully exploited. The Minister of health Szumowski has admitted this indirectly. He did not know why they are not exploited, said Lukasz Szumowski in Interviews. Poland could weekly perform 140.000 Tests (Germany: about a Million), but only half of them (Germany: about 350.000). Meanwhile, it is tested at high weekly fluctuations more than to the beginning of the crisis. According to official data, Poland has undertaken in the last three weeks, a daily average of about 20,000 Corona Tests.
“All the infection, and missed a herd,” says Andrzej Sosnierz. Many of those who had contact with an infected Person, have not been tested yet. “Some did not give up, if you came through in the Corona-Hotline of the health authority ‘Sanepid’.” According to Sosnierz there is a lack of structure and organization. Much is left to chance. Has changed Silesia in the upper, where hundreds of miners and their families infected. Here is now tested solid. “It’s a pity that this is happening only now,” says Sosnierz.
According to research by the Online-service ‘Okopress’ behaviour are financial disincentives to the reason for the slow Test. Hospitals are reimbursed and received from the national health insurance Fund, only a portion of the test cost.
The position, however, it will deliberately tested little, to make room for the PiS forced President elections, as well as confirmation of the incumbent Andrzej Duda, the appropriate environment, in spite of the pandemic, not the doctor, and politician Sosnierz own.
For non-excluded, by contrast, considers the chief doctor of a Wroclaw hospital. To let “in the middle of the pandemic is irresponsible,” says Krzysztof Simon in an interview with DW.
“bullshit for disoriented voters” is the representation of the disease progression. “Honestly, we have probably 20,000 patients, the replicate the Virus is active. The number of infections derived from other statistics, is expected to be about 100,000.” The rule was simple: If you test a little, you have little confirmed cases. Finally, there were officially just under 23,000, many of Silesia, in upper.
muzzle for Doctors?
He was speaking as a doctor, and a private person, underlines Simon in an interview with DW, not as a province-‘Arztrat’, as he also acts. The Doctors are used for certain official tasks. As a specialist doctors Association presented, the government banned these physicians to spread their personal opinion to Corona. The Ministry of health denies that a muzzle be adopted. It had only been prohibited, without consultation to make recommendations.
a more open discussion about Corona would not be a too big of a risk. Because even if the Epidemic is Unclear, shows the death statistics that even fewer older people died than in previous years, probably because of the high discipline that many poles were, at least initially, to sanitation and clearance rules. The now had loose, even movie theaters and fitness clubs are allowed to open again – are unacceptable, says Simon.
Robert Flisiak from the Polish Association of epidemiologists wish for, some basic conclusions, such as more preventive care capacity in the Intensive care units. The Expertise of the Polish epidemiologists ever heard of is unlikely. The government had not consulted during the pandemic, the Association says Flisiak.
author: Magdalena Gwozdz-Pallokat
*The post “Poland: no Primus of the Corona-defense?” is published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.
Deutsche Welle
