PARIS (Reuters) – The situation in the coronavirus is deteriorating in the greater Paris region where hospitals are under tremendous pressure, the director-general of the AP-HP Paris hospital organization, Martin Hirsch, said on Wednesday.
Hirsch told RTL radio there are two options to curb the disease – a local exclusion from the weekend, which already exists in other parts of the country, or a broader exclusion in the region.
“The virus is not under control. “There are just as many patients in intensive care units today as at the height of the second wave,” he said.
Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Tuesday that the time had come for more coronavirus restrictions in the greater Paris region.
Hirsch said there were nearly 1,100 people in COVID-19 in the region and that the number could reach 1,700 by the end of the month if the current trend continues.
In normal times, the greater Paris region has intensive care for about 1,000 beds, Hirsch said.
In France as a whole, there were 4,239 patients in intensive care with COVID-19 as of Tuesday, almost a four-month high.
Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Edited by Himani Sarkar and Andrew Heavens