What if 25 million French people found themselves confined at the weekend?
Now, it is no longer ten, but twenty departments which are in the grip of an epidemic outbreak.
Among them, Paris, Bouches-du-Rhône, Moselle or Pas-de-Calais ... In the race between Covid-19 - and especially its English variant, much more contagious - and vaccination, the virus is in getting ahead.
So, this Thursday, the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, evoked "maximum vigilance", due to a "high level of incidence, a share of variants greater than 50% and hospital pressure close to critical threshold ".
It is therefore time for consultation between the prefects and local elected officials to define localized actions ... If the situation continues to deteriorate, measures will be taken next week on the model of Nice or Dunkirk, now subject to confinement weekends, and they will come into effect on March 6.
What do the elected representatives of the territories concerned say?
In Seine-Saint-Denis, where the incidence rate exceeds 300 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the president (PS) of the department, Stéphane Troussel, believes that "everything has not been tried".
"We must accelerate the massive deployment of saliva tests at school from the start of Monday, among others," he said.
And to recall the “terrible social consequences” of the confinement of March, which had caused, among other things, the arrival of “5,000 new additional RSA beneficiaries” in his department.
The main lever to avoid it is vaccination, underline several elected officials, who would like the strategy in this area to also be "regionalized", that is to say that the least affected areas, such as Brittany , where the incidence rate barely exceeds 100 cases, are transferring their vaccine doses to the most affected areas.
Case by case, the carrot and the stick
This is the opinion of Jean Rottner, president (LR) of the Grand-Est region, of which Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle are classified among the most at risk, and of Martine Vassal, president (LR) of the Aix-Marseille metropolis.
"We must concentrate the vaccine solution where it is most needed," assumes the elected.
"In the same vein, we must allow the less affected departments to lighten the rules, for example by lifting the curfew," adds Jean Rottner.
But others call for going further.
This is the case of Anne Hidalgo, the mayor (PS) of Paris, who intends to ask the prefect for confinement of the capital for three weeks, according to his first deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire.
According to him, “the curfew, which looks like a de facto semi-confinement, is not enough to settle the curve.
Courageous decisions must now be made.
It's the only way ".
# COVID19 #Marseille #RestonsPrudents #GestesBarrieres |
Evolution of the epidemic at Marseille University Hospitals since 08/14/2020 ⤵️ https://t.co/dRlowMw1D4 pic.twitter.com/Z2nmF2geLN
- AP-HM - University Hospitals of Marseille (@aphm_actu) February 25, 2021
When contacted, the caregivers in the red zones are wondering how long they will last.
On the side of the Public Assistance-Hospitals of Marseille (AP-HM), we evoke a situation of "great tension".
A high plateau is already observed, with 280 Covid patients admitted, including 73 in intensive care, and it is also necessary to ensure peak operations, transplants and take care of the very many road accidents.
"If only one doctor takes a sick leave, we can no longer hold on," warns the AP-HM.
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This Thursday, all the representatives of the white coats even appealed for help to their colleagues in the private sector.
Not for them to take in patients.
But so that they come as reinforcements in their own hospitals.
“What we are also asking is that the population respect barrier gestures and do not relax as is currently the case.
How do they measure it?
“When the gastro and flu epidemics return to the emergency room,” notes the AP-HM.
Hospitals already saturated
The threat of deprogramming hovers again.
They will surely take place within a few days in Lille.
And all that feared Patrick Goldstein, head of emergencies at the CHU.
"We are preparing for a real tension and for the English variant to become the majority in the Lille metropolis from next week", loose the doctor.
As for Ile-de-France, if the departures compensate for the arrivals, "we no longer have any room for maneuver," warns Jean-Michel Constantin, the secretary general of the French Society of Anesthesia and Resuscitation (Sfar ), who also practices at Pitié-Salpêtrière, in Paris. Sometimes there are only one or two places left in hospitals and they are immediately filled. "If measures are not taken, we will have to deprogram massively otherwise we will not get out," he warns.