Press release No. 445 of 22 September 2021
- Coronavirus pandemic led to marked decrease in treatment cases: almost 2.5 million fewer cases of hospital treatment and well over 690,000 fewer operations compared with a year earlier
- 176,100 in-patients were infected with Covid-19 or treated for Covid-19
WIESBADEN – The corona pandemic had a substantial impact on the number of cases of in-patient treatment and operations in German hospitals in 2020. A total of 16.4 million in-patients were treated in general hospitals. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that this was a decrease of 13%, or nearly 2.5 million cases, compared with a year earlier. A particularly strong decline was observed during the first coronavirus wave in April, when the number of cases of in-patient treatment decreased by more than a third (-35%) year on year. The number of operations fell by 9.7% to 6.4 million in 2020 compared with the previous year. 176,100 patients were infected with Covid-19 or treated for Covid-19. One third of them (33%) were over 80 years old and just over another third (36%) were 60 to 80 years old.
