Martin Hirsch advanced the figure on Friday March 20. According to the Director General of Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP): 17% of Parisians have left the city to go and confine themselves to other regions since the start of the coronavirus crisis. That is around 370,000 inhabitants if we rely on this estimate based on statements of electricity consumption in the capital for a period of 48 hours.
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Is this “exodus” a benefit for hospitals in the Ile-de-France region which are seeing the wave of patients suffering from Covid-19 surge in? Even if the number of confined Parisians in the provinces is not neutral, health professionals do not see reason to be reassured. At the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, for example, “classic” emergencies have received fewer patients since the start, the beginning of last week.
"We can't do this type of shortcut"
"But it is mainly linked to containment measures and the fact that people no longer come to the emergency room for additional reasons," said Professor Yonathan Freund. On the other hand, we are dealing with a wave of Covid-19 patients with around 30 serious cases daily. Or 15 to 20% more every day. Maybe if the Parisians had stayed, it would have been even worse, but we can't say. We cannot do this type of shortcut. "
In other departments such as Seine-Saint-Denis, departures from the provinces had no impact. And for good reason. Very few inhabitants have left this territory, which is among the poorest in France. “The wave may be delayed elsewhere in Ile-de-France due to the exodus to the provinces, but here this is not the case. The hospital is full to the brim with Covid-19 patients, says Professor Frédéric Adnet, head of the emergency department at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny. In the hospitals of Aulnay-sous-Bois, Montreuil, and Montfermeil, they call for help from the Regional Health Agency to try to place their patients. I have eight inter-hospital transfers of seriously ill patients waiting, it's unheard of. "
"The young people have left, the oldest and most fragile have stayed"
For Professor Rémi Salomon, doctor and president of the medical commission of establishment (CME) of the AP-HP, establishing a causal link between the departures and the situation of the hospitals is not obvious. "Talking about luck for our establishments seems disproportionate to me," says Rémi Salomon. Already, because according to statistics, it is rather the young people who left. The oldest and most fragile, remained. However, it is mainly these people who risk worsening their condition and potential hospitalization in our structures. For us, that does not change much. "The Parisians are gone, but the saturation of emergencies and other services is real," says Professor Freund.
Coronavirus: they leave Paris before the reinforced confinement
