Record attendance in emergencies, risk of saturation in intensive care and lack of staff: Marseille hospitals are "one of the university hospitals most affected in mainland France" by the 4th wave of Covid-19, their leaders lamented on Monday.
The Marseille Public Assistance-Hospitals (AP-HM) wanted to sound the alarm on Monday, on the eve of the evacuation to Strasbourg of two new patients in intensive care, including a 22-year-old.
"The Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region has an extremely high incidence rate, roughly double the national average", at 587 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, which "partly explains the situation in our hospitals », Began the new director general of the AP-HM François Crémieux, surrounded by twenty department heads.
The head of resuscitation of the Timone Lionel Velly, however, specified that the Marseille situation remained "largely behind" that of Polynesia or the West Indies.
To read also "Most say: if I had known ...": in intensive care in Marseille, with unvaccinated patients
Of the 67 patients in Covid intensive care, 89% were not vaccinated, the average age in intensive care has dropped to 54 years, with a ratio of women higher than previous waves at around 50-50.
And the AP-HM warns that it will hardly be able to go beyond these 67 intensive care beds dedicated to Covid patients, due to the leave of caregivers and difficulties in recruiting, nurses in particular.
The emergencies are in a "real crisis" with record peaks of activity of nearly 600 patients over 24 hours, with Covid and non-Covid patients in this summer period.
Fears for the start of the school year
The return to Marseille will see tourists leave but a large number of Marseillais return from vacations from North African countries highly impacted by the Covid-19. "We have very strong concerns about what will happen", alarmed Professor Jean-Luc Jouve, president of the medical committee of the establishment.
Jean-Luc Jouve also pointed out the very strong disparities with an over-representation in intensive care of the inhabitants of the most disadvantaged districts, in the north of the city. In the same way, vaccination remains quite low there because of the difficulties of information, the deficit of vaccination centers and the lack of public transport but also of YouTube videos of Didier Raoult, estimated the Pr Jouve: “The IHU (
Editor's note: directed by Didier Raoult
) perhaps bears some responsibility for the fact that in the northern districts, we have a fairly miserable vaccination coverage close to 30%. "