Pau hospital facing multi-covids: “We haven’t had a caregiver hospitalized in a year”

What have you been able to observe, within the hospital center, on these infected patients…

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What have you been able to observe, within the hospital center, on these patients infected on several occasions?

It is to push an open door to note that with the multiple variants, patients could have been infected twice by the Covid, whatever their age, moreover. We even had among the caregivers, people who had up to three infections. And even, it’s rare but it does exist, people who had the Delta and Omicron variants on the same day.

Can we identify the reasons for these repeated infections?

There is obviously the vaccination status: we are more likely to be infected with two doses of vaccine than if we had the booster. However, it is not yet known whether four doses will be better than three doses. The response to vaccination is also different from person to person. Patients currently hospitalized with Omicron are highly immunocompromised. Lifestyle also comes into play: a 40-year-old who picks up their children from school and takes care of them every day is more likely to be infected than a 60-year-old who lives a little isolated.

How do these infections also affect caregivers?

In the same way, we had a lot of absenteeism among young parent caregivers and less among the “old” caregivers, including myself, who no longer have children at home and perhaps fewer social interactions. . It’s not a question of respecting barrier gestures or wearing a mask. The virus comes home with the children, the Omicron variant is extremely transmissible and it is really difficult to escape it even if you are very careful within the household. But, for the past few days, things have also been better among caregivers. The situation is improving in our establishment. We see a clearing.

Does vaccination protect against serious forms?

Scientific evidence has been established for several months: vaccination, if it does not prevent contamination, protects against serious forms of the disease. Caregivers are vaccinated, by obligation, with the booster dose, and it has been almost a year since we had a hospitalized caregiver. There are also factors that we do not yet know, an individual susceptibility to resist the virus. In a household where everyone lives together on a daily basis, the mother and children are infected and not the father. There are transmissions that could have taken place and which do not take place. And we don’t really know why.

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