Merkel suggests people self-isolate before seeing elderly relatives for 'Christmas under corona'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested that people should self-isolate for a few days before meeting elderly relatives to have "Christmas under corona conditions".

On the first day of Germany’s month-long partial lockdown, Ms Merkel said that a “bearable” Christmas would be possible if everyone pulled together.

"It will be a Christmas under corona conditions but it should not be a lonely Christmas," Ms Merkel said, adding that by going into "pre-quarantine for a few days" younger people would reduce the risk for elderly relations.

The Chancellor’s appeal for people to reduce their level of contacts came as German medics warned there are not enough nurses to care for severely ill patients if Covid-19 cases continue to rise.

While Germany has the highest number of intensive care beds in Europe, at 28,800 beds pre-pandemic with 12,800 reserve beds recently added, there is a shortfall of qualified nurses to care for the patients in them if more people are hospitalised, the intensive care register spokesperson told Welt am Sonntag.

Covid patients took up 2,200 intensive care beds on Monday, with other patients accounting for some 18,500 beds. So theoretically, the country still has close to 8,000 available beds plus the reserve. 

However, with hospitalizations of coronavirus patients rising threefold over the past two weeks, ICU specialists have warned that there is a shortfall of between 3,500 and 4,000 qualified nurses to care for patients if the beds fill up.

“Hospitals across the country are reporting beds as available even though some of them can’t be put into operation due to a lack of staff,” Christian Karagiannidis, spokesperson for DIVI, the national intensive care register, told Welt am Sonntag.

Mr Karagiannidis said that the DIVI was already receiving calls from ambulance teams complaining that there were no free beds at hospitals even though the DIVI register recorded ample capacity.

Achim Kessler, an MP for the left-wing Linke party, accused the government of “an amateurish mistake” in failing to keep tabs on the number of nurses qualified to provide care in intensive care units. “Nobody knows how many nurses with intensive care training there actually are,” Mr Kessler claimed on Sunday.