Strasbourg (AFP)
Teams at Mulhouse hospital on Wednesday reported positive signals for four days in the relentless fight they are waging against the coronavirus, while stressing that patient transfers remain essential, and the future uncertain.
"This morning at 8:30 am, there were three patients in the service", against 15 to 20 on average lately, and "it is good for everyone, everyone has a hope of improving the situation" , said the head of the emergency department, Dr Marc Noizet, during a press conference.
"For the past four days, there has been a decrease in the use of the center 15, a slightly less blatant decrease in the number of patients treated in the emergency room in connection with the coronavirus, a discreet decrease in the number of intubated patients, but on the other hand, has a greater number of people whose condition is deteriorating in Covid care services and who need to be supported in intensive care ", he listed.
"Yesterday and this morning, we had a little room in the Covid unit, which had not happened for a long time" and "yesterday, on center 15, we had the lowest day in 30 days," said the doctor, without yet being able to say whether it was a real plateau of the disease or a rebound between two waves.
Fifteen daily transfers are still necessary to cope with the arrival of new patients, while 176 have already been insured from Mulhouse to other regions or abroad, according to the hospital management.
The hospital currently has 80 occupied resuscitation beds: in addition to 56 "intramural", 24 are in the military field hospital deployed in one of its parking lots.
Tuesday, the Grand Est regional health agency had evoked "the first signs of a loosening of the situation on the Samu and the emergencies" in the region and estimated that the number of hospitalizations should decrease between April 15 and 25 .
An announcement obscured, the same day, by exceeding the threshold of 1,000 deaths in the region.
Teams at the Mulhouse hospital also expressed their concern on Wednesday about supply difficulties for certain medicines, notably curares.
"This leads us to change the type of product, by default taking products that do not have the same ease of use and, in intensive care, to adapt the dose of curare to the right level," explained Dr Noizet.
© 2020 AFP