Faced with the coronavirus, the CHU of Toulouse reassures and is ready

On the third floor of the Emergency Resuscitation Medicine building at CHU Purpan, the Infectious and Tropical Diseases Service (SMIT) specializes in the treatment of bacterial, viral, parasitic and mycotic infections. Except that in addition to HIV infections, meningitis or septicemia, doctors and healthcare staff must manage the care of potential patients affected by the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 disease. A doctor and a nurse are mobilized for this reception and detection, the daily operation of the service is unchanged. “Our teams are well versed, we apply the usual precautions”, summarizes Professor Pierre Delobel, head of the infectious and tropical diseases service (SMIT) at the Toulouse University Hospital.

For the past two weeks, around thirty people, mainly from the areas affected by the circulation of the virus, have been received in the service for detection tests. None of them are currently positive. “These people are generally well informed, they do not come from themselves but are referred by the Samu because they have symptoms of viral infection, as there are every winter,” said the doctor.

The procedure is simple: if they are not already wearing it, a mask is offered to the person upon entering the hospital in order to protect the nursing staff, who will first question them. If a screening test is necessary, a sample is taken from the nose or throat, supplemented, when possible by a sputum sample. “Management is ambulatory when the patient does not require care. He goes home and is called to give him the test results within 4 to 6 hours. We only hospitalize medical care cases, “says Professor Delobel. “If the epidemic increases, the strategy will be different, we will have to focus on the sick. For the moment, we are acting to slow down the transmission. “

10 beds in negative pressure rooms

In the service, 10 beds in negative pressure rooms are ready. At the entrance of these rooms, a display unit with masks, hydroalcoholic gel and gowns awaits the caregivers who then pass through an airlock – where all the sampling equipment is ready – before accessing the room where only circulation can be incoming air.

The following ? No one can predict it, but infectious disease specialists are reassuring. ” I’m not worried. We have more and more data on the relatively low severity of this disease. It affects elderly and weakened subjects with a slightly higher mortality rate than for seasonal influenza but below 2%. Children are little affected and when this is the case it does not matter, “said Professor Guillaume Martin-Blondel, assistant to the head of department of SMIT.

“The concern will come if we have a massive influx of elderly people,” adds Professor Delobel, who recalls: “For SARS in 2002, MERS-Cov in 2012, the mortality rate was over 30%, for Ebola c ‘is 50%… We must not fall into the irrational. The seasonal flu kills between 6,000 and 10,000 people in France every year. ”

As for the masks, the infectiologists specify that they are useful for the sick people so that they do not transmit the virus but “they have only one psychological utility in the street”. The handshakes to be avoided are also symbolic “but they make people aware that they have to wash their hands. “

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