"She is not welcome and we asked the prefect to make all the arrangements so that she is not welcomed in Guyana", declared at the end of a meeting Rodophe Alexandre, the president of the territorial collectivity from Corsica, surrounded by senators Antoine Karam and Geoges Patient.
"She" is Karine Lacombe, head of infectious diseases at Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris, non grata in Guyana where she had to go to set up therapeutic trials on patients suffering from Covid-19.
▶ ️Karine #Lacombe, head of service at the APHP is not "welcome" in #Guyane, according to Rodolphe Alexandre and the two senators (Antoine Karam and Geoges Patient), to set up therapeutic trials. They told Prefect Marc Del Grande.https: //t.co/hjyQtcIs5f pic.twitter.com/wwU3ahqmAA
- La1ere.fr (@ la1ere) June 30, 2020The elected officials therefore “demanded” on Tuesday that the therapeutic trial, which consists in injecting patients suffering from Covid-19 with the plasma of cured patients containing antibodies directed against the coronavirus, “should not take place in Guyana”. Already underway in mainland France, it was to be extended to Guyana and Mayotte. This has aroused many critics, some Guyanese refusing to be "guinea pigs".
Lack of patients
"Where does this unilateral idea come from that Guyanese figures would justify the installation of a therapeutic center in place of hexagonal France?" "Asked the deputy Gabriel Serville in a letter to the director of the Guyana Regional Agency. The latter recalls that on June 29, the territory had "only 120 hospitalizations, including 19 in intensive care", and 15 deaths since the beginning of the epidemic, while the metropolis still counted on June 26 "8.886 people hospitalized and 634 in intensive care ”.
Launched on April 7 by the French Blood Establishment (EFS), the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) and Inserm, 200 cured patients were to be sampled in Ile-de-France, in Grand- East and Burgundy-Franche-Comté, while the trial was to include 120 patients in the acute phase of Covid-19: 60 receiving plasma and 60, a placebo.
A figure not reached, because when the test was launched in early April "we were already in the deceleration phase of the epidemic," said Karine Lacombe. Many patients who arrived at the hospital no longer met "the inclusion criteria for benefiting from the plasma test".
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