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 reach.
While one elderly patient is being driven out of the ward and smiling faintly, Boss Jean-Pierre Deyme is on the phone to arrange the next arrival and call out instructions to the staff.
Louisa Pinto, a nurse with nearly 20 years of experience, points to the evacuated room where a cleaner is already working, and scrubs the mattress for the next arrival.
“The bed does not even have time to cool down,” she says as the patient monitoring system constantly beeps in the background.
For now, everything is stable in the 20 beds around her where Covid-19 victims lie lifeless, in a silent battle with the virus.
Paris is experiencing a third wave of the pandemic, which hampers the risk of saturated hospitals even more than the first wave in March and April last year.
“With what’s coming in April, it’s going to be very complicated,” said Pinto, a mother of three who has not been on holiday since last summer and, like other staff, will cancel a planned break this month.
Even with a new round of restrictions coming into effect this week, Health Minister Olivier Veran predicts that infections in France will only peak in mid-April, while hospital admissions will continue to climb until the end of the month. .
Terrifying predictions leaked to the French media by the AP-HP authority in Paris last week showed by the end of April that 2,800-4,400 people in intensive care in the Paris region were even locked up with a strict.
In the first wave, the number peaked at 2,700.
– Staff shortages –
The director of Antony Hospital, Denis Chandesris, says the capacity for intensive care has already been increased by drastically reducing all surgery except for critical cancer, cardiac and emergency cases.
Hospitals across the region have taken similar measures and redeployed beds and created new wards, but they are reaching their limits.
“The problem is not so much beds or materials; it is a question of finding medical and paramedical staff who can admit patients,” Chandesris explained.
Last Sunday, a group of emergency care directors in Paris warned in an open letter that the situation was so dire that medics would soon have to start “triage” – patients would have to choose care based on their chances of survival.
This prospect frightens staff – and President Emmanuel Macron has always promised to protect hospitals and avoid the kind of scenes seen in Italy in March last year when patients piled up in corridors.
In a televised speech to the country on Wednesday night, he promises to increase the intensive care capacity nationwide from 7,665 beds currently to 10,000 – a jump of 30 percent.
“I want to thank medical students, retired people, the military health service and medical volunteers. Everyone will be mobilized in a greater way,” he announced.
Opposition politicians and some experts reacted skeptically while an Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche found weekly that only 35 per cent of French people had confidence in their government “to deal with the coronavirus effectively”.
Pinto, the nurse, emphasized how very technical it is to work in intensive care, which requires special training and knowledge.
– New restrictions –
Macron is making a limited exclusion next month, doubling the growing number of cases to about 40,000 a day, compared to their level a month ago.
The sharp acceleration is due to the spread of the more contagious so-called British variant that became dominant in France.
New measures include nationwide travel restrictions, which restrict people to ten kilometers from their homes and the closure of schools and non-essential shops.
Only a significant increase in the vaccination campaign – which started slowly but is now picking up the pace – fills any medicine in Antony Private Hospital with any hope.
After months of dosing, the government has promised a big application this month and an increase in the rate of jabbing.
Samir Taik, a taxi driver from Paris, walked out of Antony Hospital last week as the 1,000th Covid-19 patient to benefit from oxygen therapy in the Covid-19 intensive care unit.
The 43-year-old, who loves boxing and sports, is still short of breath and is severely traumatized to see his health deteriorate so rapidly.
He says he knows three or four people with a similar profile to him who was recently admitted to the hospital.
“Young people should know that we are not talking about 80-year-olds, these are people who are 30, 40, 45-year-olds and have no health problems. The British variant is not like the old one,” he said. told AFP.
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