Hospitals running out of ICU Beds in Switzerland – not really 2.0

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I’ve looked at the current situation with hospital capacity in Switzerland, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), with data current as of November 28, 2021:

Situation in Berne
Situation in Zurich
Overall Situaiton

As of November 28, 2021, ICU-bed situation is a follows in Switzerland:

Overall, 22.8% of all ICU beds are free. These numbers include all patients, not only the COVID-19 ones;
Overall, COVID-19 patients occupy 25.4% of ICU bed capacity;
Canton of Zurich has most ICU beds (179), and has only 9.5% beds free (17 beds in absolute numbers). It’s worthwhile to note that 21.8% are COVID-19 patients (39), 68.7% are non-COVID-19 patients.

Data in table form:

According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, population of Switzerland was 8,670,300 in 2020, and as you can see from the above numbers, total number of ICU beds is 854, which results in 9.8 beds per 100,000 inhabitants.
And this is during a pandemic, were apparently, the normal number of ICU-beds has not been increased at all.

Hirslanden Group, with 17 private hospitals has some numbers on mortality rate for ICU patients spanning years 2013 to 2020, of course, from the pandemic point of view, 2020 is interesting and it will be even more interesting to see numbers for 2021:

Note that the numbers for November 29, 2021 are slightly higher in some cantons. The new numbers have been published while I was writing this article.