Ten days ago, Benjamin Clouzeau, doctor in the medical intensive care unit of the Bordeaux University Hospital (Gironde), finally breathed.
“We were done with the second wave of the Covid.
And then, last week, patients came back in droves.
This Sunday, it was to his hospital that were transferred by medical plane two patients aged 33 and 70, so far hospitalized in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne).
The government plans to proceed next week with around 100 medical evacuations of Covid patients from Ile-de-France to other regions.
The "thistles" operation is notably scheduled for Thursday 18 and Sunday 21 March: it will allow fifty patients to be evacuated by medicalized TGV.
“This gives a little air to overloaded sheave services, recognizes Benjamin Clouzeau.
But it is only a valve and it needs to be accompanied by stricter political measures.
The word is not pronounced but it is easily guessed: confinement.
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"We are trying to use all the weapons at our disposal to avoid it, Prime Minister Jean Castex said this Sunday evening, without excluding anything, during his intervention on the streaming platform, Twitch, with journalist Samuel Étienne .
Every day that passes is a day won ”.
"But if it is necessary to confine, we will do it", had already dropped a little earlier the Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon, aware of being "on a ridge line".
For the time being, the executive is clinging to its regional strategy, reinforced in this by the latest opinion of the scientific council.
More than 4000 patients in intensive care
Faced with a rejuvenation of patients and "more severe" cases, caregivers fear them that the British variant, reputed to be more contagious and more deadly, will transform the third wave into a tsunami in the intensive care units.
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The number of infected has, moreover, increased again this Sunday.
While the threshold of 4,000 Covid patients admitted to these specialized services or intensive care was crossed this Friday for the first time since the end of November, this figure increased again slightly in 24 hours, to 4,127 this Saturday, including 188 news admissions.
More than a quarter of these patients in shifts are in Ile-de-France.
The Prime Minister stressed that he had observed this weekend "young people in intensive care" during his visit to a care service in Seine-Saint-Denis.
"Because of the variant, the health crisis is playing overtime and we are not yet out of the hostel", admits Jean Castex, who however prefers to see the glass half full: the milestone of five million people who have received a first dose of vaccine.
To avoid overcrowding emergencies, the government is still betting on accelerating vaccination, counting on reaching the goal of ten million French people bitten by mid-April despite the delays announced in particular by AstraZeneca.
"It is a bet that is not necessarily won because the current situation is extremely uncertain and it does not take much for it to become untenable, believes the professor of infectious diseases, Anne-Claude Crémieux.
Everything will be played out from day to day, but you have to be aware that you are walking along a precipice.
"