Paris (AFP)

A diagonal from the medical transfer: the evacuation of patients from the Grand Est to New Aquitaine will accelerate this weekend, with the dispatch of forty new patients suffering from coronavirus, while the Ile-de-France almost saturation.

After ten days of national confinement which has just been extended until April 15, France continues to organize to try to relieve hospitals in the regions most affected by the epidemic.

Because as Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Friday morning, the health crisis "will not improve quickly", due to an "extremely high" epidemic wave, which "is subjecting the entire system of care, the entire hospital system, at a formidable tension. "

According to the latest official report on Friday evening, the epidemic killed 1,995 in hospitals alone, including nearly 300 in the past 24 hours, and led 3,787 patients to intensive care (+412).

- Saturation in the 93 -

"Even intubated ventilated, it degrades suddenly and we do not understand what is happening", loose Cathy Le Gac, resuscitation nurse at the Beaujon hospital in Clichy (Hauts-de-Seine): s' there are a lot of healings, the coronavirus continues to sow terror, between these macabre flashes, the seniors hit hard in the Ehpad or the 16-year-old Ile-de-France who recently succumbed to it.

As part of Operation Resilience launched by Emmanuel Macron, patient transfers initiated this week are intensifying, with the implementation this weekend of the largest medical evacuation of Covid-19 patients on French territory.

Forty patients must be transferred from the Grand Est to New Aquitaine, announced the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of the latter. In detail, four patients are expected on Saturday in hospitals in Poitiers and Limoges, and Sunday, 36 others will arrive on two medical TGVs, to be distributed in a dozen cities.

New Aquitaine has 1,640 beds in "critical care" (including resuscitation, intensive and continuous care), of which 569 are available.

This situation contrasts with that of the Ile-de-France, which is increasingly tense: out of 1,500 places in the intensive care units in the Paris region, 1,300 beds are currently occupied.

In places, like in Seine-Saint-Denis, hospitals are already saturated. "We are in the process of switching to war medicine," said Héloïse (modified first name), nurse. No "sorting" of patient is yet mentioned, "but we know that patients over 80 years are not a priority" ...

Measure of "anticipation", the Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon, announced Friday a first evacuation during the weekend of fifteen patients from Ile-de-France resuscitation towards establishments in the Center-Val de Loire region.

- Masks and tests -

Caregivers also fear a "potential shortage of resuscitation drugs to come," according to Professor Bruno Riou, AP-HP crisis medical director (hospitals in the Paris region).

The equipment is also at the heart of a growing boom, embodied by a collective of caregivers, already at the origin of complaints against Edouard Philippe and the ex-Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, and who claimed contracts with the government on Friday. orders for masks and coronavirus screening tests for the last three months.

The Prime Minister must give a press conference on Saturday with the current Minister of Health Olivier Véran, and promised a "transparent" point of the health situation, in particular the shortage of masks or the question of tests.

Emmanuel Macron, he denied any possible French delay in managing the epidemic. "I approached this crisis seriously and seriously from the start, when it started in China (...) I followed at each stage three essential principles: base our decisions on scientific advice, adapt to the evolution of the crisis, take proportionate measures ", assured the president in an interview published Saturday by three Italian daily newspapers.

© 2020 AFP