Aulnat (France) (AFP)
Four coronavirus patients treated in hospitals in the Paris region arrived Friday at Aulnat airport, near Clermont-Ferrand, on an Airbus A400M used for the first time for this purpose by the French army, a noted an AFP journalist.
When the military transport aircraft landed around 8:30 p.m., medical personnel protected from head to toe by gowns, masks, visors, caps and slippers, recovered the patients and rolled the stretchers from the rear ramp of the four-engine aircraft. to two ambulances and two helicopters from Samu / Smur and civil security.
Two patients took the direction of the Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital by road, and the others won by air from the hospitals of Aurillac (Cantal) and Moulins (Allier).
"The Air Force has made all its planes available to supplement the means of the State. This strategic A400M plane is usually equipped to evacuate possibly soldiers in operation, but it was necessary to adapt the means of this plane at Samu ", declared to the press General Frédéric Gout, departmental military delegate of Puy-de-Dôme.
Entering service in 2013, the A400M is capable of transporting up to 37 tonnes of equipment over 4,500 kilometers, while being able to take off and land on rudimentary runways.
Scheduled for early afternoon, the patient transfer was several hours late due to a "patient stabilization problem" before boarding, said the officer without providing further details.
To relieve congestion in Ile-de-France hospitals, which have reached saturation point due to the influx of coronavirus patients, the authorities have been organizing the evacuation of patients from the region since Wednesday. Some 150 of them were to be evacuated by this weekend, according to the Regional Health Agency (ARS).
A total of 88 establishments in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region welcome more than 2,700 Covid-19 patients, including 700 in intensive care and intensive care, according to figures published Thursday evening by the ARS.
A cumulative of 404 hospital deaths of patients with Covid-19 was recorded on April 2 in the region. In Puy-de-Dôme, 74 patients were hospitalized on Thursday, including 33 in intensive care.
© 2020 AFP