Europe 1 with AFP 7:27 p.m., December 8, 2021, modified at 7:28 p.m., December 8, 2021

The regions of Occitanie, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Pays de la Loire relaunched the white plan on Wednesday in their hospitals.

This device makes it possible to deprogram the less urgent interventions in order to free up space for the increasingly numerous Covid-19 patients.

The regional health agencies (ARS) of Occitanie and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté announced on Wednesday the triggering of the "white plan", allowing a deprogramming of lower priority operations in order to free up beds for Covid-19 patients, in increase .

A decision also taken in all public and private health establishments in Pays de la Loire, which will have to deprogram "20%" of their medicine and surgery activity, completes the ARS.

Preserve urgent interventions

"The rapid deterioration of epidemic indicators" and "the importance of the number of serious Covid cases treated in our health establishments" led the Occitanie ARS to trigger the "white plan, an exceptional mechanism intended to strengthen the organization of hospitals facing the resumption of the epidemic ". The latter will thus "increase the number of intensive care beds" thanks to the deprogramming of certain treatments. On the Pays de la Loire side, we want to preserve urgent and semi-urgent interventions, especially those related to cancer. The objective of this measure, indicates the ARS, is "to be able to treat in the best possible conditions and in a united manner (public and private establishments) the patients affected by the Covid". 

White plans already triggered elsewhere

"The occupancy rate in the intensive care units has reached 92% and even 100% in several departments today," reports the ARS. In the Occitanie region, the proportion of Covid patients in intensive care "today exceeds a third of available beds", warns the ARS. In Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, "already more than 600 people are treated today in health establishments in the region, including 100 in critical care. They were just over 400 patients including 70 in critical care the day before. last weekend ", underlines the ARS. Last week, the Strasbourg University Hospital and the Colmar and Mulhouse hospitals, in the Grand Est region, launched their white plan. The Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL) did the same on Monday, as did the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region on Tuesday.