Nearly 400 new hospitalizations for Covid-19 in one week.
French Polynesia has faced a severe resurgence of the epidemic since the arrival of the Delta variant at the end of July on the territory.
An outbreak that greatly worries the health authorities in Paris.
This Thursday, the High Commissioner of the Republic in Polynesia, Dominique Sorain, therefore announced that the confinement, curfew and traffic restrictions in force since August 23 would be extended.
In addition, thirty-six members of the health reserve arrived Wednesday evening (this Thursday Paris time) in Papeete. A hundred in total are expected over the week in reinforcement at the hospital center and in the peripheral hospitals, all saturated. Nurses and nursing assistants in intensive care, these volunteers mobilized by the State are deployed for a mission of three weeks on average.
“We had already welcomed a first contingent on August 15, and a second on August 25.
And this evening we have 36 caregivers who are sent by Public Health France, ”explains Cédric Bouet, chief of staff to the high commissioner.
“They will each join hospital services, either here in Tahiti at the main hospital, or in one of the secondary hospitals;
in this case in the archipelagos of the Leeward Islands, in Raiatea.
They will join the teams who take care of covid patients ”, in particular“ those who have contracted serious forms and who are now in intensive care, ”he continues.
"Saturation phenomenon"
“The hospital was no longer able to cope with all the cases presented to it.
And we had observed that a phenomenon of saturation, of hospital embolism, was emerging, so we had to have additional reinforcements, it is those who are starting to arrive.
There will be others, ”continues Cédric Bouet.
In a written question to the local government, the independence representative to the Assembly of French Polynesia Eliane Tevahitua also called for the borders to be closed.
"This situation of astonishment with which we have all been confronted for a few weeks now, in reality testifies to your notorious inability to manage this crisis", she also wrote to President Edouard Fritch, while denouncing the "laxity" of the State in terms of border control.
“I did not understand why after 160 deaths we did not close the territory when we realized that every day we had deaths.
There was even a weekend when we had 54 deaths: it is as if in France there were 13,000 deaths in 72 hours, it is enormous ”, declared Stéphane Milon, deputy director of the Te reeducation center. Tiare, who now provides post-covid care.
On the local channel TNTV, Patrick Galenon, the general secretary of the CSTP-FO, the most important local union, asked for "really strict confinement", denouncing the many possible exemptions.
He also regretted "an explosion of political rallies, an explosion of festive gatherings, the opening of schools", until the beginning of August, which he said favored contamination.