"For the moment, our most important mission is to assist the other, but if this continues, they will have to go get cannon fodder elsewhere." Leslie is a palliative care nurse in Marseille, working twelve hours a day on the front lines to care for people at the end of their life. Like all hospitals and clinics in France, its establishment now receives critical cases of Covid-19. Elderly patients who could live at home or in nursing homes were evacuated from his department.

"We have drastically reduced visits, so imagine telling families, who know their loved one at the end of their life, that they have no right to see him. Psychologically, this is harsh for us. We are their only human contact before the big departure. "

Its service only counts one man in 18 caregivers. A figure in line with that of the 87% of women in French healthcare staff.

"I said to myself: if it is positive, that's it, I'm cooked"

The 31-year-old nurse says that a few days ago, her clinic saw a patient in the final stage of cancer who showed signs suggesting a coronavirus infection. "He had a fever and respiratory failure. He arrived at our house in the morning but the doctor decided to take the test at 2:00 pm All morning I was in contact with him without protection."

The results did not arrive until the following day, an evening of anxiety for Leslie. "I said to myself: if it's positive, that's it, I'm cooked." If the patient was negative, Leslie still deplores the lack of responsiveness of his superiors since the arrival of the coronavirus in France.

The same goes for Sylvie *, this fifty-year-old nurse who has been practicing for 20 years and now works in a mobile emergency and resuscitation service (SMUR) in the north of France. As soon as she learned of the epidemic in China, she learned about the virus.

"When I saw what was happening there, I said to myself that we had to prepare. We were trapped, today everyone seems to fall from the tree. We would have had to anticipate the crisis. " One morning, she looked after a 22-year-old patient with 40 degrees of fever and very insufficient oxygen saturation.

"She was like a dog after a race, very short of breath. We transferred her to intensive care as soon as she arrived." Like many people, Sylvie did not think that young people could find themselves in such a serious state. "There, it is concrete, 22 years what! She has a good chance of getting out of it but her case is very worrying," she specifies.

She regrets that information from caregivers does not circulate. "We are told that surgical masks are enough but we do not believe it. The doctors themselves are not all aware of the measures to take when there is a doubt about a patient."

"We wore a mask a day when we should have changed it every 3-4 hours"

Pauline * is a nursing assistant in Bordeaux. In his cardiology department, as in all medical establishments in France, non-emergency operations have been postponed since March 12 at the request of the government.

To accommodate severe cases of Covid-19, space must be made available in hospitals. All national capacities as well as the maximum of doctors and carers will be mobilized. Non-essential care will be postponed.

- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 12, 2020

Surrounded by a large majority of women (39 out of 40 caregivers), she confirms the lack of equipment and cohesion in the distribution until March 20. "As they were afraid of thefts, they gave them dropper. We wore a mask a day when we should have changed it every 3-4 hours."

A shortage of equipment denounced by most French healthcare staff since the start of the health crisis. In response, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran revealed on March 28 that more than a billion masks had been ordered.

To protect our caregivers: I ordered 1 billion masks.

An intensive airlift is in place to transport them and make them available to those who take care of us, as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/K1JIQS98QV

- Olivier Véran (@olivierveran) March 28, 2020

But with strong international demand, shipments of masks are slow to arrive.

"We don't know what the perimeter of the cyclone is"

In her department, Virginie, 48, receives ten patients with Covid-19. The night nurse at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris does not complain but readily admits that the pace is sustained.

"The infected patients come here. We have to decide where to transfer them: at home when it's not too serious, in an intensive care unit when their condition deteriorates. We also have to disinfect the rooms, it doesn't stop. C is a questioning of all our certainties ", confides the one who has never seen such a situation in this establishment where she works since 1996.

"A little anxious but not afraid", Virginie explains that in her department, once again made up mainly of women, two colleagues caught the coronavirus. "The main thing is not to convey our concerns to patients, but we have to be honest, we don't know what the perimeter of the cyclone is."

* The first names have been changed.

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