It is the place in France where the coronavirus epidemic claims the most victims. In Mulhouse, the crisis has reached a severity such that the hospital can no longer observe the new patients. There, patients arrive non-stop, with 60 admissions per day Tuesday and Wednesday. Today, no fewer than 400 beds are occupied by patients with Covid-19.
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Among these 400 beds, 54 are resuscitation beds. And this service, saturated, does not manage to be unclogged despite the various exfiltration operations that have taken place for several days, concerning a total of a hundred patients. Two Mulhousians on a medical TGV in the direction of western France, dozens by civil helicopters, 16 in the army field hospital installed in the car park (with a capacity of 30 beds) and three times six patients by military aircraft. In fact, a fourth Morphée operation will take place on Friday, with a departure from the A330 Phoenix scheduled for Aquitaine.
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Caregivers also affected
These large means, as necessary as they are, do not allow the hospital to find a real "room for maneuver". "With all this help, we thought that the tension would decrease a bit, but that is not the case," laments the hospital director with Europe 1. Above all, the caregivers are also affected: 130 hospital staff mulhousians are on sick leave, and 20 caregivers are hospitalized, including two in intensive care.
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"We are tired but we hold, that's the state of mind," says a caregiver at the heart of this crisis, in the city most affected in the region most tested. "We have to keep in mind that the hospitals that relieve us today may no longer be able to afford to do so in a short time."
Deserted emergencies
In this critical situation, an oddity: in traditional emergencies, there is six times less activity than usual. "It's staggering," said the head of the emergency room. What is it due to? There may be a containment effect, people take less risk, with fewer car and work accidents. On the other hand, the considerable decrease in strokes and appendicitis is inexplicable. This decrease is fully offset, of course, by the coronavirus.
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