Germans enjoy some of the most generous employee illness policies in Europe, a fact which the conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, says is undermining efforts to kickstart the EU's biggest economy whose growth has largely stalled since 2022. At a regional campaign event last weekend, Merz said staff took an average 14.5 sick days per year too high, he said. That's nearly three weeks in which people in Germany don't work due to illness, he said.
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The western German state North Rhine-Westphalia is proposing a new package of measures and is calling on the federal government to strengthen safety on trains ahead of a Deutsche Bahn security summit in Berlin. The state, Germany's most populous, wants to expand the use of two-person teams among train conductors. It is also urging the national government to provide legal clarity for the wearing of body cameras on public transport, which is currently voluntary.
Today's data, from NHSE's latest weekly winter situation report, covers the week ending 25 January. It showed that bed occupancy in English hospitals remains dangerously high, at 94.6%, while more than 14,000 people medically fit to be discharged from hospital were still stuck in beds. On a given day, there were on average 50,368 patients who had been in a hospital bed for seven days or longer, showing problems lie at the 'back door' of hospitals.
In the last week, we have seen significant demand on our services, in A&E in particular, which is resulting in lengthy waits for patients. This follows a previous critical incident in January, where rising demand, winter infections and staff sickness all led to unacceptable delays. More than half of our adult beds are currently occupied by patients who are over 80 years old, whose health issues can impact them more than younger patients.