Eight hours on site to ensure the mobilization of the State in Guyana. Prime Minister Jean Castex is expected this Sunday in this French territory of South America facing the galloping epidemic of coronavirus. Flights between Guyana and the rest of France are also prohibited (with some exceptions) since this Saturday.
What is the health situation in Guyana?
It is "worrying", as the General Directorate of Health and Public Health France regularly reminds us. This Saturday, 5,949 cases of confirmed coronavirus and 26 deaths have been recorded there since the start of the pandemic. 130 people are currently hospitalized, including 23 in intensive care. The territory, still under a health emergency (like Mayotte), expects to experience the peak of the epidemic during the second half of July.
# COVID19
ℹ📝 CovidInfo of July 11
➡️ 245 positive cases out of 1188 tests carried out.
ℹ 3 deaths to be deplored at @ CHCayenne973.
📍174 Cayenne Island
📍1 Grand-Santi
📍16 kourou
📍22 Macouria
📍5 Mana
📍3 Montsinéry
📍1 SGO
📍23 SLM
Strength and courage to loved ones and caregivers. pic.twitter.com/J3C2mWwO9H
The authorities fear in particular the repercussions on the already fragile health system of the very critical situation in neighboring Brazil, which has been badly affected. The three hospitals in the territory - the Cayenne, Kourou and western Guyana hospitals - already mobilized for patients victims of leptospirosis or dengue, launched their white plans last weekend.
VIDEO. In Guyana, “people are hungry”, Médecins du monde alert
Several medical evacuations of patients have been carried out to Guadeloupe and Martinique, but the lack of places in West Indian hospitals are starting to be felt, said the director of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) Clara de Bort. To curb the epidemic, targeted reconfinement measures in certain districts or communes have been put in place, and a curfew is in force.
Why is Jean Castex going there now?
For his first trip to Overseas since his appointment in Matignon on June 3, the Prime Minister wants to “embody territorial continuity” and recall that “Guyana is a territory of the Republic like any other”, where “the services of the "State and government are mobilized", according to those around him.
"I come [...] with the desire to prepare France for a possible second wave" but "by preserving economic life, social life", warned Jean Castex on Wednesday.
What is planned during his visit?
Jean Castex, accompanied by the Minister of Overseas Sébastien Lecornu and the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, must arrive at 10 a.m. (3 p.m. Paris time).
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The delegation will notably go to Cayenne, to the interministerial crisis center which has just been installed under the orders of crisis director Patrice Latron, who arrived Thursday from Paris. The Prime Minister must also meet hospital staff and elected officials.
What are the residents asking for?
Population and elected officials regularly demand the opening of a military field hospital which was already mobilized in Mulhouse and Mayotte during the crisis and has resuscitation beds. Impossible according to the Minister of Health, because it is a structure "which takes a long time to be dismantled, transported and reassembled". For the moment, only one field hospital for civil security has been installed at the Cayenne hospital center to receive non-Covid patients.
The Prime Minister is notably expected by the Mayouri Santé Guyane collective, made up of the main militant and political forces behind the great social movement of 2017, which calls for additional measures and means against the epidemic, and in particular a greater number of tests. .
The ex-overseas minister Annick Girardin, who came at the end of June with health reinforcements, had launched a call for national solidarity to bring in more carers, estimating that a total of 300 additional reinforcements were needed to increase the number of beds in intensive care, very low (thirty on Cayenne currently).
