It was the first day of confinement.
On March 17, he begged the French on TV: "Please, stay at home".
Nine months later, Jean Rottner, emergency doctor in Mulhouse and president (LR) of the Grand Est region, hard hit by the Covid, does not like to talk about it again.
The emotion is too strong.
As 2020 comes to an end, marked by an unthinkable epidemic that has swept away 64,000 lives and knocked out the country, the white coats, still at the front, have not forgotten anything about "this viral steamroller in the face".
There are friends, loved ones "fallen in combat", breathes Jean Rottner, leaving indelible scars, patients "who left life without their hand being held", the dedication of caregivers, "I shoot them. my hat forever!
"
In March, the emergency physician was marked by a phone call from a colleague from Mulhouse, a strong man, spending 40 minutes talking alone, in tears.
“He told me that young nurses brought lunch to the sick rooms and that two hours later they died, they didn't understand what was going on.
"
Jean Rottner, emergency doctor in Mulhouse and president (LR) of the Grand Est region./AFP/Sébastien Bozon
In front of the emergency room in Mulhouse, behind the bay window of the virology lab, Samira Fafi-Kremer, the head of service, kept in mind the images of these ambulances arriving in an interrupted stream.
While his team lacked reagents, tests, machines equipped to analyze the 700 daily samples, coming from all over Alsace, stretcher bearers in cosmonauts paraded under his windows.
The epidemic had a face.
“It's still a trauma, I'm not the same today.
Paradoxically, the biologist pharmacist also has fond memories of this period.
“It was a daily effervescence, we all worked 7 days a week until midnight and no one complained.
"
"We have moved into another world"
How to put into words this shocking year?
For Marie Razon, general practitioner in Paris, it was “completely insane, unreal”.
The 8 o'clock applause, she didn't want to hear it, "otherwise it would have made it exceptional and if it was, I didn't feel able to handle it".
Recently, she dreamed that we would give up the masks, that life would start again, strong, intense, in restaurants and cinemas.
We will still have to wait.
At the start of the epidemic, she remembers the lack of equipment, patients without masks in the waiting room, who were reassured if they did not know how to treat, "a frustration".
There was also this fear of contamination, “very quickly, I put my children away in my family.
We have moved into another world ”.
Marie Razon, general practitioner in Paris./DR
In addition to the cabinet, she agrees to make consultations in a Covid center at the town hall of Ve, mounted urgently, without waiting for the approval of the regional health agency.
Colleagues try to dissuade him.
"They told me:
you're crazy to go there
, whereas for me it was obvious, a soldier would not refuse to go to war and I did not take medicine to hide myself during 'an epidemic.
"
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At the Covid center, it's resourcefulness.
The caregivers improvise consultation boxes separated by electoral panels, covered with sheets, buy saturometers at the pharmacy and the town hall employees make gowns for them.
“What we experienced did not fit into any framework but the solidarity was incredible, the local restaurants delivered Indian dishes, pizzas, Starbucks, jerry cans of coffee.
One day, an old man, suffering from Covid and in bad shape, comes to be examined.
No choice, he must go to the hospital but the man is convinced, if he goes, he will die.
“So we made arrangements to have oxygen delivered, to keep it with us.
By the end of the day, he had recovered.
"
"I had never seen so many seriously ill in my life"
Moments of joy, there were some.
At Arras hospital, in the North, Quentin Broucqsault, resuscitation nurse, had a “hell of a time” this summer when a 30-year-old woman with Down's syndrome was admitted to his ward at the same time as her father. , under oxygen in another room.
“We thought she wasn't going to be okay, so before intubating her, they got to see each other on video.
He said to her:
daddy will be there when you wake up
.
Fifteen days later, when he was about to leave the service, out of trouble, his daughter woke up ”.
There were times when the doctors couldn't believe it and others when everything was lost and death prevailed.
Impressive scenes like at the Croix Rousse hospital, in Lyon, during the first wave.
"When I joined the units, I had never seen so many seriously ill in my life", testifies the head of the sheave, Jean-Christophe Richard.
Jean Marc Agostinucci, emergency doctor at Samu 93 / DR
And then there is this young 25-year-old, without health problem, taken care of by Jean-Marc Agostinucci, emergency doctor at Samu 93. “He felt unwell in the street, the next day, he was intubated, two days later. he was dead, ”blows this doctor, with a solid career, who piloted operations at the Stade de France during the attacks of November 13.
As in spring, seats in sheaves are scarce.
“When we have one, we say to ourselves that we must not let another Samu take it from me!
It's a race against time and against its own colleagues.
»Is the end of 2020 a deliverance?
General practitioner Marie Razon finds it difficult to project herself, worried for her patients.
“I don't even dare ask them, how they are doing, one in two consultations ends in tears.
The reality is that people are doing very badly today.
And for others, the arrival of 2021 is a relief.
This is the year of the vaccine, they say, of hope at the end of the tunnel.
One year of Covid in 12 episodes
1.
Laurent Chu, patient zero
2.
At the origins of the virus, the martyrdom of Wuhan
3.
These French towns marked forever
4.
An impressive scientific saga
5.
Tova, centenary and survivor of the virus
6.
These images that we never thought we would see
7.
How the pandemic turned our lives upside down
8.
Let's not forget the deaths of the coronavirus
9.
How the school adapted
10.
Social networks boosted by the virus
11.
These doctors have become the faces of the crisis
12.
Doctors, nurses, nursing assistants: those moments they will never forget
