COVID: Short on ICU nurses, Germany looks abroad Amid a nursing staff shortage, German hospitals have had to take matters into their own hands. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, a new arrival from Mexico proved very valuable at Berlin's well-known Charite Hospital. Nurse Herbert Perez works in Berlin Charite's intensive care unit The story of German Health Minister Jens Spahn and Judith Heepe, the nursing director at Berlin's Charite Hospital, is a little like the tale of the hare and the hedgehog. Heepe, like the wily hedgehog, is somehow always faster. In September 2019, Spahn was in Mexico signing a contract to speed up the process for Mexican nursing staff to receive work permits in Germany. Heepe had already been there. A month before that, Spahn had sent his state secretary to the Philippines on a recruitment mission. Heepe had been there, too.