Paris (AFP)
Three members of the nursing staff at Tenon hospital in Paris, where a serious case of new coronavirus is hospitalized, tested positive, not serious, and around fifty others were ousted from the establishment, which had to shed its emergencies.
A total of 56 caregivers who had been in contact with this patient were evicted from the hospital and placed in a "fortnight" at their home - where they will have to stay for 14 days - forcing the hospital to "offload" its emergencies, announced Saturday Hélène Goulet, head of the emergency department.
"We no longer receive the firefighters or the Smur, but we continue to take care of patients who present themselves to the emergency room," she said during a press briefing.
Of the 56 evicted personnel, 20 work in the emergency room, the rest in the intensive care unit of the nephrology department, where the 82-year-old patient was admitted.
"The situation at Tenon hospital is fairly tense and evolving," said Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious diseases department, while specifying: "Tenon hospital is working, it is not closed, it doesn’t is not in quarantine, it's not the + bazaar +, it's just a mandatory organization in this kind of case, which is not new ".
"We adapt: if too many staff are exposed, we put them in the fortnight, we reduce the airfoil and we eventually see how colleagues, even other hospitals, can help us," detailed Professor Muriel Fartoukh, head of the intensive care unit.
Tenon thus received "very substantial help" from other Parisian hospitals where patients "who do not require special monitoring" have been redirected.
But if the situation evolves "in epidemic mode, we will have to function differently", commented Dr. Goulet. Caregivers will come to work with a mask, patients with mild symptoms will not be kept in hospital.
The three caregivers tested positive "are doing very well" and were admitted to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, a benchmark health facility, according to Professor Fartoukh.
For Professor Pialoux, "it is not a surprise" that they were infected "because the patient was not known to be carrying the virus before being tested". He is still in a "serious" situation, and is "in isolation", in medical intensive care.
When the patient was admitted to Tenon on February 21, he was not tested immediately because he was not returning from a risk zone.
"It was not a late diagnosis, we did it when the recommendations changed, on February 27," argued Professor Pialoux: "from the moment the case was positive there was has not had anyone infected ".
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