“Patient in solitary confinement! » The alert is written in capital letters in a corridor of the Auxerre hospital, pulmonology department. “Please contact the healthcare team before entering the room”, completes the sign that overlooks a display rack filled with masks, gowns and gloves.
→ READ. Covid-19: after the fifth wave, the future of the pandemic remains uncertain
Since last summer, the health situation has allowed the hospital to close its Covid unit and install some of these patients in the pulmonology department. The exceptional has become usual, and for caregivers previously mobilized in the unit, the virus is now part of everyday life. “For us, the Covid has almost become an ordinary disease”, admits Doctor Boubekeur Berri, pulmonologist.
“We have no choice, we deal with it”
Especially since the Omicron variant resulted in fewer severe forms than during previous waves. That day at the Auxerre hospital center, 4 people were in intensive care out of the 12 beds available. “We had fewer serious forms but more hospitalizations, confirms Marie Callanquin, head of the operational hospital hygiene team. With Omicron, we trivialize the Covid a bit, there is less worry. »
However, since the start of the pandemic, “the Covid has taken over everything”, she adds. In fact, even if the fifth wave is decreasing, contamination is decreasing and scheduled operations are gradually resuming, the tension is still sensitive in pulmonology.
→ INVESTIGATION. “The long Covid folded me like a schoolbag”
“The end of the peak? You can’t see it here.” notes Isaline Demeter, who supervises the service.Split in two by a fire door, the service now welcomes Covid patients in half of its beds, 24 in total. A nurse and two orderlies take full-time care of these patients who, that day, occupy all of the 12 available beds. “There are a lot of pneumo patients in the other departments,” laments Doctor Boubekeur Berri.
Two caregivers in a room in the pulmonology department. / Lilian Héliot for La Croix
Conversely, some beds are now occupied by patients positive for Covid-19 but hospitalized for other reasons. Many patients also occupy Covid beds for lack of a return home solution, regrets the team. “We have no choice, we deal with it”, breathes Dr. Boubekeur Berri.
An activity that contrasts with the calm of the waiting room of the Covid-19 screening center, which replaced the Covid emergency room. Deserted. “The activity has been down for a week”, explains Valérie Vicquelin, the manager of the center, who remains cautious: “Let’s wait for the return of the holidays. » Only 46 appointments are scheduled for the day, while at the height of the fifth wave, the center carried out around 140 tests per day and another hundred last week. “It allows us to return to our initial activities”welcomes Claire Buchez, in charge of “contact-tracing” for patients and caregivers since May 2020.
“There, it has to stop”
The nurse now devotes only half of her time to it, and has resumed her activity in the outpatient department. Here too, the virus is now an integral part of the landscape. “In fact, we got used to the Covid”, says Claire Buchez. “Today, we are grounded”, adds Valérie Vicquelin, insisting on the ability of caregivers to adapt since the start of the pandemic. “But things are still easier without the Covid, and the disinfection or the additional organization that goes with it”, says the manager.
Same observation on the upper floor, in the laboratory lulled by the hum of the machines: the rhythm has slowed down for a week, even if the workload and the constraints linked to the virus have not disappeared. “We have changed our hours, our way of working… But there, it has to stop”, says Dr. Stéphanie Honoré-Bouakline, visibly exhausted.
In addition to the tests at the screening center, the 24-hour laboratory takes care of the tests carried out at each new hospitalization and the tests coming from other establishments, in addition to the usual analyses. For the biologist, who spends more than two hours a day manually entering test results and who also manages stocks, the virus has permanently taken precedence over other activities: “Everything else is put aside”, she sighs.
Technicians to keep pace with testing
At the back of the laboratory, the “Covid room” has replaced the bacteriology pole. It now houses the automats and the tube plates for the day’s samples. Here, two technicians have been hired to keep up the pace. Chloé Le Roux, 21, is one of these new recruits.
Preparing Covid kits for inpatients in hospital laboratory. / Lilian Héliot for La Croix
She is preparing Covid kits to test people in hospital. “I made at least four in advance! », exclaims the young lab technician energetically, facing the piles of boxes. Nothing to do, however, with the tests of 600 detainees from a nearby remand center, carried out in the middle of the fifth wave and which she still remembers.
→ READ. “My friends are afraid of infecting me”: being immunocompromised in the midst of a wave Omicron
In the office of Dr. Isabelle Labourdette, head of the laboratory, other boxes are also piled up. As a pivot site, the Auxerre hospital center is responsible for redistributing the antigenic tests sent by the ARS to establishments in the region.
“We have been doing it since the start of Covid, but even more so since Omicron. I recently requested that another service take over, so far without success,” she says. At lunchtime or in the evening, she takes care of distributing the tests according to the quotas communicated to her. “We are quite far from biochemistry, concedes Dr. Labourdette, but it has become part of our daily lives. »
Reopen pre-crisis files
Such is life at the Auxerre hospital, where the Covid, if it loosens its pressure, permeates each day. The continuous flow of hospitalizations which is stabilizing also makes it possible to reopen other files, set aside since the start of the pandemic. Urgent, however. “There is a well cared for France and a badly cared for France”, advances Pascal Gouin, the director of the hospital center.
And the department of Yonne, largely deserted by general practitioners, would belong to the second category, with difficulties in accessing care aggravated by the pandemic.. The hospital, half of whose doctors are foreign, is struggling to recruit.
Faced with these difficulties, Sévena Relland, the establishment’s deputy director, now wants “try to revitalize actions and projects” of the hospital. Doctor Anne-Laure Villing, newly elected head of the Establishment Medical Committee (CME), also wants to think about the long term.
Due to the health crisis, “The CME was frozen for eighteen months. Relaunching these projects has become essential,” says the one who keeps an eye on the presidential campaign. “Now we are waiting to see the budgets, we all want to have the human and financial resources. But will we have the recognition of the future grand elected? »
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The timetable for the lifting of restrictions
► From February 16
Reopening of nightclubs and resumption of “standing” concerts.
Consumption in the stadiums,cinemas, transport are again authorized, as well as at the counter in bars.
► From February 28
Wearing a mask will no longer be compulsory in closed places subject to the vaccination pass: theaters, cinemas, bars, restaurants and museums.
It will be kept in transport and closed places not subject to the vaccination pass.
The wearing of the mask remains however ” recommended “ in the event of a high concentration of people in the same place.
► At the end of school holidays
On February 11, the Ministry of National Education indicated that, when school holidays return from each zone, the wearing of a mask will be abolished in the playgrounds but will be kept in class.
The number of self-tests requested for contact case students will drop from three to one as of February 28.
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