|
 According to the decision, the constitution, which stipulates that
people with disabilities cannot be discriminated against, was
violated by the lack of government provisions to ensure fair
treatment of disabled people if hospitals have to prioritise.
The court ruled that lawmakers must act "without delay" to set out
legally binding criteria to protect vulnerable people but it did not
say how that should be done.
Nine people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions filed the
complaints at the court in Karlsruhe, as the coronavirus pandemic
pushes hospitals to their limits.
The complainants, who point out that they are at high risk of
becoming severely ill or dying from COVID-19, fear that due to their
statistically lower level of survival, they would always have lowest
priority for an intensive care bed.
Guidelines from German medical organisations including the DIVI
association for emergency medicine have identified probability of
survival, taking into account the patient's frailty and existing
diseases, as the main criterion for triage.
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 The court rejected the case in
July 2020, saying that regulating medical
prioritisation raised difficult questions, and
that a triage situation did not seem likely.
Germany is bracing for a fifth wave of
coronavirus infections as the omicron variant
takes a foothold.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious
disease reported 21,080 new coronavirus cases on
Tuesday, for a total of 7,026,369.
According to the RKI's latest figures, as of
Monday, 19.4% of adult intensive care beds were
occupied by patients with COVID-19.
(Reporting by Ursula Knapp, Writing by Miranda
Murray, Editing by Zuzanna Szymanska, Robert
Birsel)
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