Since last Tuesday, Jean Rottner, LR president of the Grand Est region and 1st deputy mayor of Mulhouse, has been working from home. He did not participate, on Wednesday, in the visit of President Emmanuel Macron who came to inspect the military hospital installed in Mulhouse. This absence, however, owed nothing to a dispute between the head of state and the emergency doctor who had donned his gown last fall. It was before the coronavirus epidemic that has shaken the Mulhouse hospital for four weeks. "A steamroller fell on us," he said again Tuesday in an interview with Le Figaro.
"I was apologized beforehand, but I'm fine already. Like all caregivers who have symptoms, I apply a week of confinement, plus 48 hours without clinical signs, "explains Jean Rottner, stressing that, on Thursday, he was able to" work from home ". However, he did not get tested. "I had no signs of seriousness," he replies. In the Haut-Rhin, several candidates, including outgoing mayors, and some of their running mates were affected by the virus during the electoral campaign.
Jean Rottner: "It's a steamroller that happened to us"
However, the regional president "did not want to approach the President of the Republic". He was able to alert him on numerous occasions. Because Alsatian hospitals are far from being out of the eye of the storm when the Ile-de-France is going to be impacted. This Thursday, there were 400 people hospitalized including 70 in intensive care, and 131 infected staff in Mulhouse. And 798 patients hospitalized in the Bas-Rhin, including 221 in intensive care. "Despite the army medical center, transfers by health TGV to hospitals in the west, we no longer know where to put people," he says, recalling that "patients are hospitalized until Heidelberg "
"It's terrible": the chilling testimony of Jean Rottner, doctor and president of the Grand Est region
"Not only Colmar and Strasbourg - the CHU admitted 41 serious patients in a single morning - but Reims, Nancy are starting to saturate," he warns. Likewise, he is worried that the Saar and Rhineland-Palatinate could close their borders… Nevertheless, Jean Rottner wishes to underline "this beautiful complementarity between the hospitals of the region, but also the collaboration between the public and the private". "We will have to remember," he said. In the meantime, he has just alerted Minister Olivier Véran so that Medicare gives the list of doctors and paramedics in the Grand Est to pharmacies, so that the 5 million masks ordered by the regional council can finally be distributed. Enough to occupy the confined president.