Paris (AFP)

Deputy-nurse, senator-generalist, president of region-emergency doctor: since the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic in France, many have swapped their chosen scarf to take back the white coats of their beginnings. A return to the sources which they tell AFP.

Emmanuelle Fontaine-Domeizel, LREM deputy from the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, is a liberal nurse by profession. Registered on the health reserve list, the elected representative went from March 16 to 22 at Besançon hospital six hours' drive from her home to "relieve the teams on the spot".

She worked at night in the service of infectious diseases, so with patients with Covid-19. "We had all the necessary equipment, masks, gloves, gowns, glasses ... while knowing that we had to save it because we don't know how long it will last. But that hospital knows how to do it!", Explains the deputy.

Over the days, in this department where 20 people were hospitalized, it "seemed to him that the patients arriving were getting younger and younger".

Senator of the Radical Movement and former general practitioner, Véronique Guillotin has been working again for a few days at the Mont Saint Martin hospital (Meurthe-et-Moselle), "in the service dedicated to the reception of patients with or suspected of being affected by Covid-19 "said his team.

For other elected caregivers, it is now a matter of juggling between the two functions.

The deputy LREM of Charente Thomas Mesnier thus resumed service Monday in the emergency department of the Angoulême hospital but without giving up his other function. "I am not leaving my coat as a deputy but I am putting on the white blouse over it", he argued to AFP, explaining that after his working day he will take his elected hat back for audio conferences and other telephone meetings.

"I did not have to think about it" assures this emergency doctor, returned to the hospital where he practiced before his election, before being alarmed: "We see the wave that is coming."

- "Stay in place" -

Bernard Accoyer (LR), former President of the National Assembly and still mayor of the delegated municipality of Annecy-le-Vieux (because of the postponement of the second round, because he did not stand for re-election) is also a retired ENT doctor. He has just been entrusted with a mission by the mayor of Annecy (Jean-Luc Rigaut, UDI) to organize the establishment of outsourced consultation centers.

"We are in a territory with a large cluster nearby (La Balme de Sillingy, editor's note), Lombardy is a few hours from here. I was contacted by liberal doctors from Annecy, who were having problems receiving Covid-19 patients, "says the elected official.

However, Bernard Accoyer will not see any patients. "I am 74 years old, I will be very, very careful and I will not do any consultation. It is not my role," he explained.

Jean Rottner, the LR president of the Grand Est region, has been back at the hospital for a few weeks but there is more of a support function for caregivers.

The former emergency doctor has not practiced medicine for several years, and for him, it is not taken up "overnight".

"I give episodic helping hands in regulation to the Samu, by answering the calls, according to the needs, he underlines. This allowed me to realize from the beginning of March that something was happening and that 'you had to press the alert button. "

For Jean Rottner, it is his "knowledge of the hospital environment" which allows him to be "a transmission belt" between the Regional Health Agency, the prefect, the German cross-border authorities, and the government. "I tried to be a facilitator and to launch some alerts, (...) but I was not at the front like others can do it" he says.

"When you come to lend a hand like that, you just have to stay in your place," said the man who was elected in 2017 after more than seven years as mayor of Mulhouse.

© 2020 AFP