Contrary to what the government site displays or to what Jean Castex was able to pronounce on Thursday morning in the National Assembly, there are no more than 5,000 patients with Covid-19 "in intensive care".
These 5,254 seriously ill patients, to use the exact figure on April 2, are in reality in "critical care".
3,963 of them are actually taken care of in the intensive care unit, according to the most recent figures we have obtained.
The other 1,291 are in intensive care or under continuous surveillance.
Their serious condition also requires heavy care, but not as much as in intensive care.
Whether in intensive care or in another critical care service, "everyone needs to receive oxygen, but a resuscitation service makes it possible to put in much more resources and, if necessary, to intubate the sick", we explains Stéphane Gaudry, professor of intensive care intensive care at the Avicenne hospital (Bobigny).
We were also able to get hold of the regional figures, which are not communicated on a regular basis.
We find sometimes and recently the trace in certain regional weekly epidemiological points, but all these documents are not put on line every week and some are incomplete.
Thus, still on April 2, 1,087 patients are in intensive care in Île-de-France while a total of 1,613 are in “critical care”, as Public Health France also indicates on its Géodes data platform.
Hauts-de-France (468 patients in intensive care), Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (435) and Auvergne Rhône Alpes (434) follow.
The figures for the other regions can be found on our map above.
7,906 intensive care beds deployed ... and soon 10,000?
These figures do not necessarily mean much if we do not relate them to the number of intensive care beds deployed by region.
The Directorate-General for the Care Offer (DGOS) sent us those as of March 30.
If we assume that they have changed little in three days, we can consider that reporting the number of beds occupied on April 2 already gives a good indication.
The regions most saturated with Covid patients in intensive care are Île-de-France (58%), Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (54.5%), and Grand-Est (54.1%) .
Nationally, this rate is around half.
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Focus on truncated numbers
Île-de-France and the Paca region are also the two regions where the number of resuscitation beds deployed has increased the most compared to 2019, that is to say before the health crisis.
They now have 1,862 and 798 respectively. In total, France has 7,906 intensive care beds on March 30, ie 45% more than before the crisis.
Emmanuel Macron has already announced that it will be possible to go to 10,000 or even a little beyond in the coming weeks.
Of course, we must not think that barely half of the intensive care beds are occupied in France.
Because there are also all non-Covid patients to take care of, whether they have been victims of a road accident or have undergone an operation, for example.
Nationally, around 40% of intensive care beds are occupied by such patients.
In the end, this makes an intensive care occupancy rate (all causes) of around 90%.
This "was already on average 90% before the health crisis", indicates the DGOS.
But "because of the extension of capacities and the number of beds, it confirms a level markedly higher than that outside the crisis", she adds.