Paris (AFP)

"On probation", soon "out of control": the executive is counting on the transfers of patients to relieve the hospitals in Ile-de-France saturated by the Covid-19, but it will also have to decide quickly on a possible reconfinement of the Parisian region.

With six daily evacuations by air from Monday, then a "more massive operation" by medicalized TGV at the end of the week, according to government spokesman Gabriel Attal, the health authorities estimate at a total of 100 patient transfers. treated in intensive care units in Ile-de-France to other regions by next week.

"Île-de-France is clearly on borrowed time" because "the English variant (of the virus), the majority, is not only more contagious, it is also more deadly", and "our resuscitation capacities are saturated", exposed on France 2 the president of the region, Valérie Pécresse, saying not to oppose measures "justified, if they are proportionate and accompanied".

"There are only two treatments that are known to be effective today against the epidemic, containment and vaccination. And the vaccination will only have effects in several months while here, we are reasoning in terms of weeks. ", added on France Inter the medical director of crisis of the Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP), Bruno Riou.

More than 5 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, of which 2.2 million have been vaccinated with two doses.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, suspended by several European countries, continues to accumulate disappointments: the firefighters of Bouches-du-Rhône suspended its use on their staff on Monday after adverse effects.

- "Fed up" -

For Bruno Riou, the transfers of patients are only "a relief valve" and if the situation "is not yet out of control", "it will be".

The virus is still actively circulating in the Paris region, where the incidence rate climbed, on March 11, to 391 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants over seven days, against 348 a week earlier.

Three departments of Ile-de-France (Seine-Saint-Denis, Val d'Oise, Val-de-Marne) now exceed the incidence rate of Pas-de-Calais, where confinements on weekends are in force.

Without excluding a solution of this type for the Paris region, Jean Castex repeated Sunday, on the Twitch network, that "we must use all the weapons at our disposal to avoid it", because the French "have them. fed up ".

The Prime Minister will also speak Tuesday evening on BFMTV, on the eve of a new health defense council at the Elysee Palace.

Despite a very tense health context, the government wants to try to project itself in the longer term by discussing Monday with the social partners of the "way out of the crisis".

On the menu in particular the "progressive disconnection of aid" to the economy.

One year after the first confinement, the Covid-19 still weighs heavily on daily lives: curfew at 6 p.m. in metropolitan France, restaurants, bars, cultural places and private sports halls closed, students welcomed in droplets in universities.

"I hear a lot say that a week without confinement is a week gained (...) for me it is a week lost", declared, in allusion to the strategy of the executive, professor Riou, pointing out the "considerable consequences", in particular in terms of death, sequelae for the sick or the deprogramming of other care.

Last week, the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of Ile-de-France had given the "firm order" to hospitals and clinics to deprogram 40% of their medical and surgical activities.

At the national level, after a decline in the number of cases detected during the first week of March, they started to rise again: 115,270 people tested positive between Monday and Thursday last, against 103,747 on the same days of the previous week.

Last week, 1,855 patients with Covid-19 died in hospital or nursing home, for a total since the start of the epidemic of 90,429 deaths.

© 2021 AFP