"Individual isolation" is required. This is what Olivier Véran recommends, who indicated on Saturday that he was going to ask "Ehpad-type establishments to go towards individual isolation" for each of their residents in order to "go further" in protecting the elderly. against the coronavirus.
The Minister of Health will also ask to "test as a priority for the virus the staff who work within the Ehpad", the accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people, he said during a press conference, alongside Prime Minister Édouard Philippe.
>> LIVE - Coronavirus: follow the evolution of the situation Saturday March 28
"I will ask Ehpad-type establishments to prepare to move towards individual isolation for each resident in the rooms," said the minister. Because, after the blue plan, "we must go further to protect these particularly fragile elderly people and make even more difficult decisions", indicating that "some establishments" already practiced this device to "protect the residents of Ehpad from dissemination of the virus. "
700,000 elderly people losing their autonomy
And "wherever possible, I will encourage any approach so that the staff who work tirelessly already in nursing homes can as little as possible leave these establishments to take the least risk of coming back with the virus", said he added.
The elderly people housed in nursing homes "are fragile, already sick, the most at risk from viral disease, and in particular the coronavirus," said the minister. There are in France "more than 700,000 elderly people with loss of autonomy" housed in "more than 7,000" nursing homes, he said.
CORONAVIRUS ESSENTIALS
> Paid leave, RTT, sick leave: what changes the state of health emergency
> What do we know about chloroquine, the treatment that is debating?
> What to do if you are sick, but not coronavirus?
> Why you will have to be patient to be reimbursed for a canceled trip
> Homemade bread, short circuits ... Our solutions to continue to eat well during confinement
> Sex: how to manage abstinence during confinement?
"The blue plan allowed us to take difficult measures humanely", with "the prohibition of visits, the removal of families, identification wherever possible within the nursing homes of areas dedicated to patients with coronavirus ", he noted, noting that he had" committed to destocking every day 500,000 surgical masks "for these establishments.