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Paris medics fear worst of Covid wave still to come
PARIS, April 4, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – In the Covid-19 intensive care unit of
the Antony Private Hospital south of Paris, no bed stays free for long and
medics wonder when their workload will finally peak.
As one recovered elderly patient is being wheeled out of the ward, smiling
weakly, boss Jean-Pierre Deyme is on the phone arranging the next arrival and
calling out instructions to staff.
Louisa Pinto, a nurse of nearly 20 years’ experience, gestures to the
vacated room where a cleaner is already at work, scrubbing down the mattress
for the next arrival.
“The bed won’t even have time to cool down,” she says as the patient
monitoring system beeps constantly in the background.
For now, everything is stable in the 20-odd beds around her where Covid-19
victims lie inanimate, in a silent battle with the virus.
Paris is going through a third wave of the pandemic which risks putting
even more strain on saturated hospitals than the first wave in March and
April last year.
“With what’s coming in April, it’s going to be very complicated,” says
Pinto, a mother of three who hasn’t had a holiday since last summer and like
other staff will be cancelling a planned break this month.
Even with a new round of restrictions coming into force this week, Health
Minister Olivier Veran predicts that infections in France will peak only in
mid-April, while hospital admissions will continue climbing until the end of
the month.
Alarming forecasts leaked to the French media from the Paris public
hospital authority AP-HP last week showed anywhere from 2,800-4,400 people in
intensive care in the Paris region by the end of April even with a strict
lockdown.
In the first wave, the number peaked at 2,700.
– Staff shortages –
The director of the Antony hospital, Denis Chandesris, says intensive care
capacity has already been increased by drastically reducing all surgery
except for critical cancer, cardiological and emergency cases.
Hospitals everywhere in the region have taken similar measures, re-
deploying beds and creating new wards, but they are reaching their limits.
“The difficulty is not so much beds or material, it’s a question of
finding medical and paramedical staff to be able to take in patients,”
Chandesris explained.
Last Sunday, a group of emergency care directors in Paris warned in an
open letter that the situation was so bad that medics would soon have to
start “triage” — selecting patients for care based on their chances of
survival. This prospect horrifies staff — and President Emmanuel Macron has
always promised to shield hospitals and avoid the sort of scenes witnessed in
Italy last March when patients piled up in corridors.
In a televised speech to the nation on Wednesday night, he promised to
increase intensive care capacity nation-wide from 7,665 beds currently to
10,000 — a jump of 30 percent.
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“I want to thank medical students, retired people, the army health service
and medical reserve volunteers. All of them will be mobilised in a larger
way,” he announced.
Opposition politicians and some experts reacted with scepticism while an
Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche weekly found only 35 percent of French
people had confidence in their government “to deal effectively with the
coronavirus”.
Pinto, the nurse, underlined how working in intensive care is “very
technical”, requiring specialised training and knowledge.
– New restrictions –
Macron is banking on a limited lockdown over the next month turning the
rising tide of cases which have roughly doubled to 40,000 a day compared with
their level a month ago.
The sharp acceleration is down to the spread of the more contagious so-
called British variant which has become dominant in France.
New measures include nation-wide travel restrictions, which limit people
to 10 kilometres (six miles) from their homes, and the closure of schools and
non-essential shops.
Only a significant increase in the vaccination campaign — which started
sluggishly but is now picking up pace — fills any of the medics at Antony
Private Hospital with any hope.
After months of lacking doses, the government is promising a major rollout
this month and an increase in the rate of jabbing.
Samir Taik, a taxi driver from Paris, walked out of the Antony hospital
last week as the 1,000th Covid-19 patient to have benefited from oxygen
therapy in the Covid-19 intensive care unit.
The 43-year-old, who enjoys boxing and sport, is still short of breath and
reeling from the trauma of seeing his health deteriorate so fast.
He says he knows three or four people with a similar profile to him who
have been hospitalised recently.
“Young people need to know that we’re not talking about 80-year-olds, it’s
people who are 30, 40, 45-year-olds and have no health problems. The British
variant is not like the old one,” he told AFP.
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