Paris (AFP)
With dozens of residents' deaths reported in recent days, the coronavirus epidemic is hitting the Ehpads hard, raising fears of a "catastrophe" among particularly frail elderly people and worrying families.
"We must do everything to prevent the virus from entering our establishments, to confine even more": this is the alarm cry launched Tuesday by the director of a residential establishment for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) in Haute- Savoie, where seven residents recently died from the coronavirus.
"I send a message to all Ehpad: it's not at all like the flu, we have to confine our residents even more so as not to let this extremely contagious virus spread. Otherwise, we run the risk of disaster", a continued with AFP Eric Lacoudre, manager of the Le Bosquet de la Mandallazteur nursing home, in Sillingy.
A fear shared by the Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon. "We know that deaths in hospital represent only a small part of mortality," recognized the DGS, announcing on Tuesday 240 new victims of the virus in France.
"The two main places of death are the hospital and the nursing homes," he said. He also assured that a "daily monitoring of mortality" would be implemented in institutions for the elderly "in the next few days".
Despite strict confinement and outside visits prohibited, accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people are not immune to Covid-19, which is particularly virulent among their residents.
In the East, twenty residents of an Ehpad des Vosges, in Cornimont, where 163 elderly people live, have died. In Haute-Marne, sixteen residents of a Saint-Dizier structure have died and around forty are under surveillance.
According to a spokesperson for Résidence Beauregard, in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges near Paris, the virus has also caused the death of three residents since the start of the epidemic, and the 80 others are now all isolated in their rooms since March 12.
At the retirement home and geriatrics of the Rothschild foundation in Paris, 16 people died and 81 are positive at Covid-19, according to Le Parisien.
- Test seniors more -
For several days, these announcements of death have been accelerating, worrying families and caregivers. Like Marie, 60, whose 85-year-old mother lives in a nursing home in Brittany.
"The health situation is serious. We ask questions but communication is + nothing happens, there is nothing to do +", she testified to AFP, regretting that "more a dozen people would show symptoms but are not hospitalized. "
At the National Assembly, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran assured Tuesday having given "very clear instructions to the regional health agencies (ARS) to make daily the inventory of fixtures in the various Ehpad".
"For Ehpad who have not yet implemented barrier measures, there are considerable risks of spread and mortality rates which can be catastrophic", warns Gaël Durel, president of the Association of coordinating physicians in Ehpad and of the medico-social sector (Mcoor), estimating that approximately "30% of Ehpad" do not yet have strict confinement.
For this doctor, two things are necessary to "avoid a massacre": "the reinforced isolation" of all the suspected persons of Covid-19, "with the use of a mask, an over-blouse, a charlotte and gloves for staff "and the ability to quickly test residents.
However, if the promise of the government to distribute 500,000 masks per day for the staff of Ehpad is "a good thing", "we also need over-blouses and tests", he points to AFP.
For the elderly, "there is no room in the hospital," adds Dr. Durel. "They are too vulnerable and we will privilege, which is quite understandable, people who are more likely to be able to get out of it."
However, for him, "families must be reassured because everyone is mobilized".
And also beware of "the magnifying effect that can have death tolls, more visible in nursing homes than for people who live at home," said Pascal Champvert, president of the association of directors of structures for the elderly (AD-PA).
burs-jlo / lum / alc / map
© 2020 AFP