A hospital doctor died after being infected with the new coronavirus, said Sunday the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, adding that it was to his "knowledge" the first death of this type in France.
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"I was informed last night of the death of a hospital doctor, it is to my knowledge (...) the first situation that struck a hospital doctor", said Olivier Véran to the Grand Jury RTL-Le Figaro- LCI. He refused to give "more precise information", in the name of the family's will and medical confidentiality.
According to France 3 Hauts-de-France, the victim is an emergency doctor from Compiègne, in Oise, one of the first departments to have been badly affected in France, and died after his transfer to Lille. Information confirmed to AFP from a source close to the file.
"The extraordinary courage" of the doctors
Olivier Véran, who "joined the pain of the family", noted the "very heavy price paid by the large family of doctors today". He also "underlined the extraordinary courage shown by all the doctors, carers, firefighters, all those who save lives every day".
Asked about the impact of the shortage of masks for health workers, the minister said that "what we do know is that most of the caregivers who contract the disease will not contract it as part of their job. hospitable, but outside. " While acknowledging that caregivers "are by definition those who are most in contact with the sick", he noted that "there have been several cases of contamination in a unit of doctors or nurses who, although equipped in masks could have been contaminated ".