• The Toulouse University Hospital has been faced with a saturation of its adult and child emergencies for a few days, due to winter epidemics and Covid-19.

  • This tension, increased because of the closure of emergency services of certain private clinics in the agglomeration, is likely to increase with the Christmas holidays for hospital workers.

  • Level 1 of the "white plan" was triggered this Friday in the pediatric emergency room.

    The CHU calls on Toulouse residents not to clutter up the emergency room, but also calls on city medicine and private clinics to support them over the next few days.

“This morning, there were patients in the corridors of Rangueil and Purpan.

There is also great tension at the SAMU, with a 20 to 30% increase in calls even though we have not yet entered the flu epidemic.

“Professor Sandrine Charpentier, head of the “emergency medicine” center at the Toulouse University Hospital, does not hide her concern on the eve of the Christmas school holidays, when part of the doctors' offices will close in the coming days.

While usually 300 to 350 patients are taken care of every day in adult emergency rooms, today there are nearly 400 to cross the care establishment.

With a return of Covid-19 cases, especially among the elderly.



“We are at more than 50 Covid-19 patients on geriatric services, which makes 40 to 50% of geriatric hospitalized patients.

It's not like the first waves when it was the Covid-19 that caused patients to be hospitalized.

There it's like the flu, they decompensate their chronic pathology.

That's it now, the Covid-19 disease, it's not the respiratory damage that we have experienced, "says the practitioner.

Emergency room closures in private clinics

This resurgence, combined with other viral pathologies, such as the flu or bronchiolitis, leads to a saturation of services and real tension.

Especially since the Toulouse University Hospital has recently had to deal with an increase in the absenteeism of its staff, also affected by viruses and which has seen the reappearance of clusters.

Not to mention the closure of emergency services of private clinics in the sector, such as that of L'Union this Friday evening, also faced with these problems.

"This is also what happened last weekend with the closure of the emergencies of Ambroise Paré, in fact, they were transferred to the CHU", continues the emergency manager, who "launches an appeal to all the partners to remain mobilized".

To cope, a crisis unit was opened a fortnight ago, in order to free up the places that can be.

“On average, there are 60 patients per day who require hospitalization at the Toulouse University Hospital.

We organized ourselves to try to free up space, but we have been in tension for three consecutive days.

We also have bed closures planned, which are the same every year as part of the holidays, ”underlines Béatrice Riu, head of intensive care at the CHU, who indicates that the caregivers, who have been in great demand in recent months, will not be called back. .

Call for accountability to patients

A system already seized up to which are added the disturbances also recorded at the level of patient transport companies, which do not escape the cases of Covid-19, and which delay the exit of patients and therefore the release of beds.

A call for “good practices” is therefore launched for patients, but also for parents.

Because if adult emergencies are on the verge of explosion, this is also the case with pediatrics where bronchiolitis, coupled with the flu, is wreaking havoc.

The level 1 plan of the white plan was therefore triggered in the pediatric service.

“It is a way of alerting the population and city medicine to the very high tension to which we are subject, so as to limit the arrivals at the hospital of children who are not essential”, insists Isabelle Oliver- Petit, doctor at the children's hospital who had anticipated the wave of bronchiolitis by opening nearly 40 additional beds a month ago.

All already occupied, in particular by infants under six months, without any underlying pathology, very affected this year by the virus.

“So, during this Christmas period, the best gift we can give to these children is to avoid multiple contacts, even with family, and to apply barrier gestures”, insists this pediatrician.

Health

Covid-19: The peak of the current wave may have been reached but hospitalizations are still on the rise

Health

Weather: Can you really “catch cold” when temperatures drop?

Science finally says yes

  • Company

  • Flu

  • Covid-19

  • Toulouse

  • Occitania

  • Emergency room

  • Samu

  • Bronchiolitis

  • Hospital