Saint-Aignan-Grandlieu (France) (AFP)

"Bring a smile, a good mood": in a Loire-Atlantique holiday center, the Civil Protection takes care of migrants and homeless people affected by Covid-19 and without a place to isolate themselves.

Since March 27, in Saint-Aignan-Granlieu, near Nantes, the wooden chalets usually reserved for holidaymakers have been sheltering coronavirus patients whose condition does not require or no longer require hospitalization and who have no place to isolate themselves.

"I am single, childless, so at one point, there, I go around in circles at home," explains Charles Marion, volunteer. No longer able to exercise his profession due to confinement, he chained the 24-hour guards where he led by ambulance the patients who must be kept away but have nowhere to stay in decent conditions and without risk of contamination others.

Himself wearing a mask and gloves, he helps to equip those who handle the stretcher: charlottes, gloves, masks and gowns are required.

The center, deprived of seminars, weddings, discovery classes due to the crisis, was fitted out by Civil Protection at the request of the Regional Health Agency (ARS), to allow the reception of around fifty of people.

In a fortnight, Charles and his colleagues treated ten patients who either left health establishments after a Covid hospitalization, or declared symptoms while staying in emergency accommodation.

On arrival at Saint-Aignan-Grandlieu, they push the sick strapped on stretchers to the elegant terraces of the chalets. The image of medical equipment surprises in the middle of wooden houses surrounded by a few flowers.

A nurse and a doctor then take care of the medical follow-up, examining the patients in bed or on the terrace. The days are also punctuated by the cleaning of the chalets and the distribution of meals, gestures each time made with masks and protective gloves.

- "To be protected as much as possible" -

Almost everywhere in France, civil protection is mobilized alongside carers to deal with the health crisis, with different missions in each department depending on needs.

The 150 volunteers who responded present in Loire-Atlantique are therefore divided between two hotels in the Nantes area where migrants or homeless people who are not sick are housed, and Saint-Aignan-Grandlieu, where they watch over the sick until symptoms disappear for 48 hours.

The two teams do not mix to avoid any risk and Marine Clouet, who ensures communication at the same time as she officiates in the "first line" group with the sick, believes that the volunteers are well protected and have, for a shortly, sufficient protective equipment.

Bring the disease home? "These are things that we think about, knowing that we really put things in place so that we feel as protected as possible."

© 2020 AFP