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Berlin – The Federal Audit Office (BRH) believes that the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) is inadequately prepared for a future pandemic. This is the result of a report by the Court of Auditors that the Bundestag’s Budget Committee received today via letter. t-online reported.

The report, entitled “The Federal Ministry of Health is not adequately prepared for future pandemics,” states that the number of physically available intensive care beds is continuously decreasing. There is also no new national pandemic plan.

According to the Federal Audit Office, funds distributed to the federal states for the construction of intensive care beds “should have mathematically led to an increase in capacity of around 13,700 intensive care beds”. However, since October 2020, the number of beds ready for use and available for short-term use has been declining due to a lack of nursing staff.

The Court of Auditors found that the ministry led by Karl Lauterbach (SPD) could not reliably quantify the number of intensive care beds actually available in hospitals. This is important for preparing for future pandemics.

“This means that a key feature of adequate pandemic preparedness is missing,” the BRH concluded. However, preparing for a pandemic is not the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Health, according to the auditors.

According to the report, the national pandemic plan has not yet been fundamentally revised. Since March 2020, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has supplemented the plan published in 2017 to prepare for an influenza pandemic with so-called COVID-19 strategy papers. “However, a fundamental revision is still pending,” it says.

In addition, the Federal Audit Office maintains its view that the corona pandemic must be dealt with stringently. © dpa/aerzteblatt.de