For the first time, patient transfers were made in the Alpes-Maritimes, a department where the situation, on the coronavirus front, is "very tense and worrying".
A patient from Antibes was evacuated Thursday to Marseille.
Another from Grasse was also transferred to the North hospital of the Phocaean city, and undoubtedly a third currently hospitalized in Cannes should follow them, told AFP Professor Carole Ichai, head of the anesthesia-intensive care unit. -emergencies at the CHU de Nice, which helps to regulate the distribution of patients in this department of the Côte d'Azur.
"We cannot wait to be at 100% occupancy"
Despite an advanced curfew at 6 p.m. since January 2, which should have deployed its profits, the situation is "very tense and very worrying", she judges, claiming to have requested these transfers "before we are saturated ”.
“We cannot wait to be at 100% occupancy” of the resuscitation beds and “we have received authorization for five transfers”.
Five more should be done next week, according to the doctor.
Until Christmas, Alpes-Maritimes tourists seemed to face the crisis with solidity.
The will of the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi was not for nothing: early decrees on the wearing of the compulsory mask in the streets, free distribution of masks, free screening, creation of a local health council in Nice on the model of the Council health defense surrounding the President of the Republic ... The former minister had deployed all his know-how to strengthen his responses, without ever forgetting to communicate.
More recently, Nice experimented with a campaign of mass antigenic testing.
And the metropolis launched, more than two months ago, a partnership with the firefighters to analyze twice a week the wastewater of Nice and the 16 surrounding municipalities.
But after the - relative - sweetness of life of the Indian summer, autumn has brooded a wave that does not seem to want to stop.
The Alpes-Maritimes are today the department where the incidence rate is the highest in all of metropolitan France: 423 new cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days, according to the latest figures stopped at 18 January from Public Health France.
Of the 2,661 patients hospitalized for covid, 324 were in intensive care yesterday.
The British variant is raging
In addition, according to a study revealed by Nice-Matin, the English variant, very contagious, is also two to three times more present on the Côte d'Azur.
"From Menton to Toulon and as in the Paris region, we are double or triple the national prevalence", told AFP Dr. Vincent Raimondi, director general of Cerballiance Côte d'Azur, the laboratory which carried out the 'study.
The end of year celebrations could be involved.
Asked by AFP, Nice Côte d'Azur airport, the second in France after Paris airports, confirms an increase in passengers, with "a small peak of 120 movements per day between Christmas and New Year, instead from 40 previously, mainly for domestic flights ”in France and rotations with European countries.