Paris (AFP)
The epidemic wave is still growing in France, with more than 500 dead in 24 hours, and patient transfers are accelerating Thursday in Ile-de-France to relieve hospitals reached saturation.
The number of resuscitation patients exceeded 6,000 on Wednesday evening, more than the capacity of resuscitation beds in the country before the crisis, which was 5,000.
According to the latest official report, the epidemic caused a total of 4,032 deaths in one month. This figure does not yet take into account the balance sheets especially in retirement homes, which are being compiled and that the authorities hope to be able to give from Thursday, said Jérôme Salomon, director general of Health.
After the Great East, Ile-de-France is hit hard with more than 9,600 people hospitalized. "We are at the end of our hospitalization capacities," warned Aurélien Rousseau, director of the Ile-de-France regional health agency, on Wednesday.
The pressure must therefore be relieved by transferring patients to less affected regions for the time being, and 36 patients were thus evacuated on Wednesday on two TGVs to Brittany. One hundred additional patients were to be transferred from hospitals in the Paris region to Center-Val de Loire, Normandy and the Pays de la Loire region by helicopter rotations between the end of the day Wednesday and Thursday.
A new medical TGV must also evacuate patients from the Grand Est region, still saturated, on Friday. Austria will in turn receive at least three French patients transferred from this area.
Patient transfers are "an excellent solution: to give oxygen to Parisian hospitals, we must send our patients to areas where the disease should not arrive in two or three weeks", explained Philippe Juvin, head of emergency at the Georges Pompidou hospital, also president of the Hauts-de-Seine federation LR.
- Management of "very short term-
Since the first operation of this type on March 18, "288 heavy patients have been transferred to less stressed regions and this number is set to increase in the days and weeks to come," said Jérôme Salomon on Tuesday.
After Polynesia, Mayotte, Guadeloupe and Martinique on Wednesday imposed a curfew on their entire territory between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. to better enforce containment measures.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who spoke on Wednesday of a gradual end to the containment put in place on March 17 in the face of the epidemic, was reassuring about the shortage of certain products such as morphine and antibiotics. "We have something to hold on to in the long term" in terms of stocks of drugs, he said on Wednesday evening, while reporting management "very short term".
Concerning the process and the timetable envisaged for the end of confinement, for the time imposed until April 15, Mr. Philippe considered "probable that we are not going towards a general and absolute deconfinement, in one go and for all the world".
Speaking before the new mission of information of the National Assembly on the governmental management of the crisis, he evoked "a deconfinement which would be regionalized" and "subject to a policy of tests, according, who knows, of classes of age ", hoping to present a draft strategy" in the coming days ".
- "More difficult days" -
Along with the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, he faced many questions about the lack of protective masks, tests or means for hospitals.
"The coming days will be even more difficult, but there are also signs of hope: if we look at the number of admissions to intensive care throughout the national territory, this figure stabilizes", concluded Edouard Philippe after 3h20 of great oral.
Faced with the shortage of equipment, especially protection, France has ordered "more than a billion and a half masks in France and abroad," Véran told the Assembly.
In addition, a consortium of manufacturers has been created with the aim of manufacturing 10,000 respirators by mid-May.
While the school holidays of Zone C (Ile-de-France and Occitanie) begin Friday evening, the students concerned and their parents, confined for 16 days, will not be able to go on vacation, reminded the Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner.
On the economic and social level, 337,000 companies have asked to use the partial unemployment scheme, for 3.6 million employees, or one in five private sector employees. According to the entourage of the Minister of Labor Muriel Pénicaud, this would represent a potential expenditure of 11 billion euros over a period of three months, much more than the 8.5 billion provided for in the amending finance bill.
The first major brand to sink, the André shoe brand has been placed in receivership.
Economic difficulties also in sight also in French football with BeIN's decision to suspend, after Canal +, its payments to the TV Rights League, for lack of competitions to be broadcast.
© 2020 AFP