Marion Böhm is from Gangelt. She has two dogs, a part-time job, a Facebook group that she administers and a caring nature. When she heard about the quarantine – at one point it affected around 1,000 people in the Heinsberg district – she thought to herself, what do these people need? Someone to do their shopping. Someone to walk the dog.
The offer from her and a few others was posted in a Facebook group called “You’re a Gangelt Resident If You …,” which has been transformed since the virus arrived in the Heinsberg district.
“My Children Will Be Staying Home”
Before the crisis, the group addressed questions like: Does anyone know a good glazier? People posted about trash had been left in the forest, a sheep that had been caught in a fence or a highland cow that had given birth to a pretty calf.
Now its members ask whether the district administrator will reopen schools and daycare centers. One person writes: “Personally, I think it’s too dangerous.” Another mother agrees: “My children will be staying home! I will teach them until everything is contained. I won’t take the risk of endangering my children. I’ll get a sick note for them and all will be good.”
There are also numerous posts about medical care. “It took me almost three hours to get through to my family doctor on the phone,” one laments. Or, “I’ve been trying for about an hour and I have already dialed the number over 150 times.”
Some medical offices had to close after coming into contact with patients infected with the coronavirus, and now the remaining doctor’s offices are overloaded, as are the backup emergency telephone numbers. These concerns are also being registered with a local district hotline for the public. A central emergency center for coronavirus tests has been set up in the gymnasium of a school in Gangelt and a second clinic is open for testing in the nearby town of Erkelenz, but patients and even doctors remain confused about the procedures.
Calls for Outside Help
Pusch is calling for help from the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. He also says it’s impossible to adhere to the rules set out by the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s center for disease control, ordering that any doctor who has come into contact with infected patients to stop working with patients. He says the district needs doctors. Pusch also believes that doctors who aren’t showing any symptoms should be allowed to work.
But is that prudent or even necessary?
The wife of one general practitioner, who herself works in the medical field, says she’s worried about her husband and her children. His office is still open, but he can’t keep substituting for other doctors at his clinic indefinitely. She says there’s no protective gear available and her husband can’t protect himself or even their children.
After pleas for help from the state, some protective gear has since been delivered. Pusch says that the real price of cost cuts is now being felt in the corona crisis, which he describes as a “test of resilience.” He asks, “How crisis proof is this country?”
And how crisis proof is his district?
In the eighth video, Pusch describes an idea that contradicts previous crisis-management efforts. He says that anyone who has come in contact with an infected person should monitor whether they have any symptoms of the illness. And that if they don’t, they should go on with their everyday lives. Otherwise, he adds, “I’d have to place the entire district under quarantine.” Pusch also says he is acting pragmatically and that the situation is “dynamic.”
Luckily, the current pathogen isn’t Ebola or the earlier SARS virus and most of the cases seen so far have been mild. Indeed, it has been something of a dress rehearsal for Germany, a production most are hoping will never make it to the stage.
Icon: Der Spiegel
Article source: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-district-is-paralyzed-by-coronavirus-a-15c4f257-0f30-4719-aa1d-ea34c73a722b#ref=rss