risk of strict confinement in Ile-de-France

Will it be necessary to reconfine Ile-de-France, where the Covid epidemic is still progressing? The government still hopes to loosen the grip on hospitals in the capital region with the first evacuations of patients on March 13, but keeps all options open.

“The situation is not yet out of control but it will be,” Bruno Riou, APHP crisis medical director, told France Inter on March 15. The professor calls for a reconfinement as quickly as possible. On March 14, 1,134 Covid patients were in intensive care in hospitals in the Ile-de-France region.

Read also: Covid: 50% of British variant in Île-de-France wastewater

Medical evacuations

The first three patients in intensive care were thus evacuated on the morning of March 13 from Ile-de-France to Nantes, Angers and Le Mans, according to the Regional Health Agency, and three others were transferred the next day.

But a more massive evacuation by TGV could only take place “in the middle of next week” because of “the enormous logistics to be put in place”, underlined Frédéric Adnet, director of the Samu of Seine-Saint-Denis.

“Each time we deprogram, as it is to build resuscitation beds that operate 24 hours a day, we have to deprogram three times more to open a single resuscitation bed” explains Professor Riou. “These deprogramming are done in stages. We are at 30-40% deprogramming, the next level is 80% deprogramming, we will get into the hardship of non-Covid patients that we will not be able to take care of, ”he warns.

“Every week that passes is lost”

For now, the executive has ruled out a reconfinement on weekends or full in Ile-de-France. “The President of the Republic always wants to avoid at all costs a reconfinement the weekend or the week,” a government source told AFP on Saturday. “But there is a compass: not to end up having to sort patients,” “she added.

The choice of the executive makes creak some officials of regions where weekend confinements have been reintroduced, such as Renaud Muselier, president of Paca, who denounced on Saturday an “injustice” between the Alpes-Maritimes, which is entering their third week -end of confinement, and Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris also very affected.

“Today, we must consider that each week that passes is a week lost for everyone,” says Bruno Riou. “Not only in terms of health: it is also lost for students, for artists, for restaurateurs… And it has a considerable health cost. There are only two treatments that are known to be effective today: containment and vaccination. However, the latter will only have effects in several months, whereas here, we are reasoning in terms of weeks. “

First successes of vaccination

According to a tweet from the Prime Minister, the vaccination campaign reached five million people who received at least one first injection, and more than two million two doses. It bore the first fruits for nursing homes, nursing homes hard hit at the start of the epidemic.

5 million French people vaccinated.
To all those who are committed to protecting our fellow citizens and who join forces with this momentum: thank you for your mobilization.
It is united that we will defeat the virus.

— Jean Castex (@JeanCASTEX) March 13, 2021

The majority of residents are now vaccinated (over 60% have received two doses). They will finally be able to regain social ties, authorized since March 13 to leave their establishment or to see their relatives there without being protected behind a plexiglass.

Since the start of the epidemic, more than 25,000 residents of nursing homes and other medico-social establishments have succumbed to Covid-19. And the total death toll exceeded the 90,000 death mark in France on March 12.

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