Thirty-seven people, including 18 patients who tested positive for Covid 19, have died since the start of the epidemic at the gerontological site of Serre-Cavalier, managed by the Nîmes Hospital Center, said the direction of the CHU on Monday.
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In addition to the 18 patients who died from the new coronavirus, 19 are suspected of having also died of the pandemic but have not been tested, the same source said during a press conference. The Serre-Cavalier site is made up of 569 staff members and 520 beds and places (42 site care beds and Rehabilitation / Cognitive-Behavioral Unit, 295 nursing home beds and 190 long-term care unit beds) . Nicolas Best, Director General of the CHU Nîmes said that 485 staff across all trades have been tested and 59 of them have tested positive for the new coronavirus. He added that 278 residents / patients had been tested out of 456. Among the patients, 46 presented a positive Covid test.
All of the patients will be tested by the end of this week according to management. Only two cases have been identified in the Edpad section of the large gerontological site. According to Professor Jean Emmanuel de La Coussaye, president of the CHU's Medical Establishment Commission, "many devices have been put in place first to prevent the epidemic from impacting the site as much as possible, then in a second step , a sectoring of spaces has been undertaken in order to contain it ” . The total confinement of the Serre-Cavalier site with a ban on family visits, cancellation of activities, and implementation of “barrier gestures” procedures for all professionals working on site was decided on March 6, 10 days before national confinement.
But Doctors Sandra Duvnjak and Cedric Le Guillou, respectively head of the gerontology division and head of the geriatric medicine department, highlighted the difficulties in applying barrier gestures "to a demented and wandering population" in the departments directly affected by the epidemic , the long-term care unit and the cognitive-behavioral unit. Regarding the endowment of masks, the director general of the CHU specified that in March, more than 15,000 surgical masks had been distributed to the different teams of the site, with an average of 2 to 3 masks per day and per professional. The endowment was revised upwards in April, the same source said.
