Orly (France) (AFP)

Between two rows of airliners nailed to the ground by the coronavirus, an Air Force A400 waits for patients: Orly airport is at the service of the evacuation of patients with Covid -19 to unclog hospitals in Ile-de-France.

Since Wednesday afternoon, more than a hundred patients, seriously affected by Covid-19, have been transported from hospitals in the Ile-de-France region to Orly, by ambulance or by helicopter, to then be transferred to provincial hospitals less crowded than in the Paris region, by air means from the Air Force.

Saturday afternoon, the sad ballet of helicopters continued, including those yellow and red of civil security, unloading on the tarmac of patients, intubated, ventilated and sedated, each accompanied by an emergency doctor and a nurse-anesthetist, wearing masks, gloves, overshoes and hooded suits.

With minute precautions, the patient, surrounded by ultra-protected personnel, is then pushed on a cart for a few tens of meters towards an aircraft of the Air Force, to be taken to another region.

On Wednesday, 24 patients were thus evacuated, Thursday 45, Friday 27 and Saturday ten. The operation was to continue for an indefinite period.

As part of the military operation "Resilience" in support of the population facing the Covid-19 epidemic, three Caracal helicopters, two Puma helicopters, an A400M cargo plane and an Army case are participating in the device on the runways of Orly, which has become a ghost airport since it closed to commercial traffic on Tuesday evening due to the collapse of traffic - commercial flights have all been redirected to Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

"The objective of the operation is a public health objective", explains to AFP Eric Lecarpentier, medical director and head of department of Samu 94.

"We extract patients for whom the risk of transport is as controlled as possible, so that we can take care of patients in Ile-de-France whose condition is deteriorating," he continues.

The patients, who came from all the hospitals in Ile-de-France, were mainly transported to the Normandy, Pays de Loire and Center regions. On Saturday, the patients were transferred mainly to the hospitals of Clermont-Ferrand and Aurillac.

- And tomorrow, the reverse? -

The airport manager, ADP, made available his emergency medical service (EMS) and a medical evacuation center (CME), and a field hospital was set up in a few hours on Wednesday to welcome the sick in case of waiting between two flights.

The CME has medical capacity with oxygen and medicines, such as a temporary resuscitation service.

But according to Dr. Chadi-Christian Jbeili, coordinating doctor of the Orly EMS, "operations are going smoothly" and the improvised center has served very little.

"A medico-aeronautical coordination cell recovers via the Regional Health Agency the list of patients to be transferred and a list of places in less strained areas than Ile-de-France, and it is this team that coordinates the vectors and the medical teams that will take care of these transfers, "he added.

Some devices can take four patients on board, others two and others only one, "it is gymnastics so that there is the least waiting for the patients," he continues.

The center will remain in place for as long as necessary, and later the system, which complements the evacuations by sanitary trains, could be implemented in other regions.

"Perhaps at some point Ile-de-France will no longer be under pressure and it will be the opposite", hospitals in the Paris region will welcome patients from the provinces, explains Lecarpentier.

For the time being, it is also a question of not putting in difficulty the regions which are not yet in a situation of overheating but which could become it quickly according to the propagation of the epidemic, he adds.

© 2020 AFP