Paris (AFP)
Two first medical TGVs evacuated Wednesday from Paris, to Brittany, 36 patients with coronavirus in intensive care, found a journalist from AFP, the first major operation of this kind in Ile-de-France, now the most affected by the epidemic.
A first TGV with 24 patients on board left at 11:12 a.m. from Austerlitz station for Saint-Brieuc and Brest, according to the Directorate General of Health, followed at 12:05 p.m. with a second transporting 12 patients to Rennes.
This evacuation operation aims to relieve hospitals in Ile-de-France, where a third of the 3,523 deaths due to Covid-19 recorded in hospitals in France were recorded.
Tuesday, the director general of the AP-HP, Martin Hirsch, had stressed that with 870 patients of the Covid-19 in intensive care, "the number of patients tangent the number of available beds" in the Ile-de-France university hospital center.
On board the trains, the patients are taken care of by nine medical teams each made up of a doctor, an intern, a nurse anesthetist and three nurses, Parisian nursing teams and from the establishments that will receive them.
Ambulances are waiting for them in Breton stations.
Other regions such as the Grand Est or Bourgogne Franche-Comté are also affected by an influx of important patients in intensive care.
Coronavirus patients have already been transferred in recent days from the Grand Est region, the first region to be severely affected, to other regions of France and to Germany, by TGV, helicopters and military aircraft.
Transfers between Corsica and the continent, in particular by rail or sea, were also organized.
Other transfers are expected to repeat in the coming weeks, according to the authorities.
The new coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 41,000 people worldwide since its appearance in December in China, according to an AFP count. In France, the virus killed 3,523 people out of 52,128 cases.
© 2020 AFP