Bastia (AFP)
"This virus is a real + crap + which messes up the lungs": at Bastia hospital, caregivers are facing the "brutality" of the fourth wave of Covid-19 with the hospitalization last weekend of a "fifty" of "younger" and "unvaccinated" patients.
In the Covid medicine unit, on the fifth floor of the Corsican hospital, three nursing aides and a nurse put on their gowns, charlotte, overshoes, mask, gloves and glasses on Thursday afternoon to go to the bedside of the 24 patients, on 28 places.
They have been there since 7:00 a.m. and will remain in service until 7:00 p.m.
One of the screens she examines, divided into nine windows, shows the patients filmed in their beds.
The other two display their constants and beep in case of difficulty.
"A patient has just torn everything off, her condition deteriorated very quickly, the resuscitator came by, he takes her into his department", on the 1st floor of the hospital, explains this calm and concentrated watchman, "at six months of retirement ", and which maintains a" constant dialogue "with the bedside team.
"I didn't think I would end my career like that, and frankly it's hard, very very hard psychologically, we come home and we can't forget and yet I'm not inside with them", admits- her before giving news to a patient's daughter.
A nurse looks at the constants of Covid-19 patients on three computers at Bastia hospital in Corsica, August 5, 2021 Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA AFP
- "Tell about their ordeal!"
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"She is better, she was in the chair and she held on well," she said on the phone without being able to confirm that family photos had been sent to her.
“I'll check it out as soon as I can,” she blurted out, her eye already drawn to another patient's steadily declining.
“Fortunately, we have a good team,” slips Pascal, a caregiver, ready to enter the den.
"It's psychologically tiring because we see sick patients who are not well, who are suffering and who are without their families," adds Cécile Del Olmo, her nursing colleague, at the bedside of a patient who suddenly "sinks".
"Tell about their ordeal because people don't believe us," she said, torn between anger and exhaustion.
In intensive care, Doctor André De Caffarelli, medical director of the hospital's Covid services, watches over the most seriously affected patients.
"Excuse me, I'm going to be a little vulgar but it's a real + crap + that messes up the lungs and it affects young people, the vast majority of unvaccinated people", he blurted out, tired of the "debate on vaccination which completely pollutes this fight against this virus "while" it remains an excellent way to protect yourself "from serious forms.
Caregivers put on their protective equipment before entering the unit dedicated to Covid-19 patients at Bastia hospital in Corsica, August 5, 2021 Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA AFP
If the "beginnings of this fourth wave" were perceived "about a week ago", "this weekend was very brutal, we hospitalized nearly fifty people and currently we manage not far from 'about thirty people ", he recounts, praising" the responsiveness of the teams ".
"It is true that the brutality was a surprise", adds Jean-Mathieu Defour, the director of the hospital center who emphasizes that the establishment "has come close to saturation".
The situation remains tense with patients "25 to 88 years old" and an average age of 50, "all on oxygen".
The patients are "younger" with "very marked pulmonary symptoms".
They require a lot of oxygen and have "the potential to worsen rapidly in a few hours", explains Mr. Caffarelli, confident that one of them regretted not having been vaccinated by imploring him to " get him out of there ".
Haute-Corse, where Bastia hospital is located, has an incidence rate of the virus four times higher than the French average with 856 cases per 100,000.
Caregivers at work in the unit dedicated to Covid-19 patients at Bastia hospital in Corsica, August 5, 2021 Pascal POCHARD-CASABIANCA AFP
Faced with the risk of saturation of hospitals, the authorities have launched the "white plan" which makes it possible to increase resuscitation capacities and call backs of personnel.
Monday a patient in serious condition was transferred by helicopter to Marseille.
"If we can transfer one or two patients, that would be good," the five Covid intensive care beds in Bastia are currently occupied, Jean-Mathieu Defour told AFP.
For the moment, the director, who is a former nurse, has done everything not to call back the staff on vacation: "There is weariness to see that in the end we cannot control" this Covid.
© 2021 AFP