Coronavirus: the number of emergency room admissions has dropped

Who said that the French did not respect ALL the instructions to fight against the coronavirus? According to the statistics of Public Health France, they did not wait to compel themselves there that Edouard Philippe institutes, Monday evening, the limitation of displacements for medical reasons to the only essential care.

In three weeks, between Saturday February 28 and Saturday March 21, all pathologies combined, the number of emergency room admissions has, according to our calculations, dropped by 53%: nearly 22,400 admissions for all of the country, despite the 2,000 additional passages for suspicion of Covid-19.

Admittedly, we can observe a "before" and an "after" confinement: the first five days during which the French experienced this measure, from Tuesday 17 to Saturday 21, admissions were 40% less numerous than '' a week before (from Tuesday 10 to Saturday 14). At the same time, hospitals recorded the arrival of many potential coronavirus patients in the emergency room: +140%.

LP Data

It was four days before these tightened restrictions that the curve of the overall number of admissions abruptly turned. On Thursday March 12, Emmanuel Macron, during a very frequent television address, alerted on the seriousness of the crisis and the need to free up places in hospitals. On Friday the 13th, the emergencies in France welcomed nearly 10,000 people less than the day before.

A presidential effect? Claire *, a nursing assistant in a hospital of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), is certain of it: “The instructions not to saturate the emergencies or to call the 15 in case of symptoms have been observed since this pressure blow (from the head of state NDLR). Previously, people came from Venaien and said: I was in contact with someone who had Covid-19 or I have a fever . We answered them: We told you to stay at home, however! "

Thus, this large influx of customers observed by Claire at the beginning of March, at the end of the flu epidemic, a disease with which the Covid-19 shares symptoms ...

Suspected underreported cases?

To date, the general drop in admissions even concerns areas that are apparently less severely affected by the coronavirus, as our interactive tool shows. In the very densely populated department of Nord, there are only a few dozen daily admissions for suspected Covid-19 but overall attendance divided by three in the space of twelve days.

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However, circuits dedicated to patients with coronavirus being set up in the CHUs, the number of suspected cases could be underestimated. In the Oise, where one of the first clusters was identified, they do not even appear in the emergency statistics of Public Health France ...

As for the general decrease in this department, Loïc Pen, emergency doctor in Creil, observed it at the end of February, when an accumulation of cases was identified and announced by the authorities. “It was blatant. We went from 130 consultations to 40 a day at Creil. It didn't last. "

Sometimes fatal fear

The fear of being contaminated therefore seems to ward off those who suffer from minor sores. "We have a big drop in activity on the patients who came for sore throats, because they couldn't see their treating physicians ...", explains Claire. According to Loïc Pen, citing an emergency room survey, the proportion of people who could have been treated in general medicine, which is around 10 to 15%, should not be overestimated.

With confinement, domestic accidents seem to replace road accidents. But where are those whose appointments have been de-scheduled or whose pathologies, sometimes serious, have not been treated, for lack of treatment or for fear of the virus? Loïc Pen talks about this patient in Compiègne, who died of a cardiac arrest, after three days of chest pain. He would have avoided coming to the emergency room for fear of catching the Covid-19. “We need to get the message out to people with serious or unusual things to come to the emergency room. Otherwise, we're going to have non-Covid deaths related to Covid. "

"There are people whose state of health will deteriorate for lack of an answer," worries Loïc Pen again, who estimates these cases at 2 to 5% of the usual admissions. “In a perfect world, it would suffice to call 15, where a regulatory agent makes a first selection. Except that the 15th is saturated to death. The risk, according to the former emergency chief of the Creil hospital, is the rebound. Let patients whose condition deteriorate decompensate and flock en masse at the height of the epidemic.

* The first name has been changed.