This is reassuring news with a caveat.
"The peak of hospitalizations has passed following the confinement" put in place in Guadeloupe to fight the Covid-19 epidemic, announced Monday to AFP the medical director of the CHU crisis, Bruno Jarrige, warning however that "the virus is still there ”.
"We must now be very attentive to what will happen on September 19, with the end of confinement and the start of the school year, because the virus is still and there and the risk is that it will start again", a- he warned.
The authorities also underlined, in their situation update on Monday, that "the situation is improving but the reservoir of virus is still very important as the start of the school year approaches", mainly scheduled for remote on September 13.
A dozen seriously affected patients will be evacuated from Guadeloupe to the metropolis on Tuesday.
At the same time, the number of beds open on site "is being readjusted downwards, in a context of somewhat weaker hospital pressure".
(Pref / ARS) pic.twitter.com/m46y3WyOiF
- Nicolas Berrod (@nicolasberrod) September 7, 2021
Monday morning, 68 people - including 59 patients with Covid 19 - were in intensive care, while the territory has a total of "98 intensive care beds" and "36 critical care beds", according to a press release from the ARS and the prefecture.
"We must continue on this path"
Fifteen Covid patients were still hospitalized on Monday "in medical services in Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy", overwhelmingly "unvaccinated or severely immunocompromised", according to the same source.
In addition, "8 to 10 patients" must be evacuated to France on Tuesday.
This drop in hospital pressure, which remains "strong", follows a drop in the number of contaminations at the end of August.
After reaching a peak of 1000 positive cases recorded per day, the archipelago, confined since early August, now has more than 200 daily cases, with an incidence rate of "432.2 / 100,000 inhabitants".
"We must continue along this path, together, to reconnect as quickly as possible with indicators below the alert thresholds", underline the ARS and the prefecture. Sixteen new deaths have been counted since Friday, people aged 36 to 97, none of whom had been vaccinated, authorities said.
