I realized the wording wasn't good, so just to clarify: "fill the capacity" should be read as "fill up the remaining capacity", not "fill the entire capacity" (

I realized the wording wasn't good, so just to clarify: "fill the capacity" should be read as "fill up the remaining capacity", not "fill the entire capacity" (that's indeed quite unlikely, simply because of non-covid baseload that will be around). Point remains: a covid patient doesn't get turned away just because a potential car crash victim might need the bed later (and vice-versa), as far as I know there's no reserved non-covid spaces, if there's more covid patients more parts of the ICU get run under covid protocols. Part of the problem with ICU capacity is that is has to be local: for many things, "an hours drive further away than normal" is annoying but solvable, if you need an ICU now it's a problem. Bottom-right here is a district-level map of Germany, showing free capacity: https://www.intensivregister.de/#/aktuelle-lage/kartenansichten https://www.intensivregister.de/#/aktuelle-lage/kartenansich... (there's some arguing how precise that data actually is, in both directions - for starters its only updated once a day afaik). Plenty places where e.g. transporting a few people from a car crash gets challenging. There's also pretty drastic statements/protests from the emergency departments and people working there, so yes, this currently sadly is an issue in some regions and the threat of it becoming worse is what finally caused some things to happen (after way to long of German politics wanting to deal with anything but this, despite it being long-predicted by the health authorities - it's extremely frustrating because it's been kind of obvious for weeks that something will have to happen at some point, the earlier the better for everyone). Something that would be interesting data-wise would be deaths during or waiting for transportation - one would expect an increase, but I'm not sure if there even is baseline data available, given rules around who is allowed to pronounce death and how it is recorded.