Four patients hospitalized on Reunion Island, suffering from Covid-19, will be evacuated to France by medical flight Thursday evening, an operation unprecedented by the duration of the flight and the number of patients transported, according to health authorities .
Read also: Covid-19: first medical evacuation from Reunion to the metropolis
Coming from Mayotte from which they had already been medically evacuated, the four patients are hospitalized in intensive care in Reunion.
They are to land on Friday morning at an airport in the Paris region after eleven hours of flight.
"
They are unconscious and intubated,
" Professor Bertrand Guihard, head of SAMU Réunion, said Thursday, March 4, during a press point Thursday at Saint-Denis airport in Réunion.
If "
there is no zero risk
" in medicine, Bertrand Guihard emphasizes: "
we have put all the means (in place) to minimize these risks in terms of medical skills, number of caregivers, equipment, 'organization and preparation
'.
If medical evacuations are common between the island and France, this is the first time that so many patients will be transported simultaneously, specifies the doctor.
A civil aviation exemption was also necessary to allow Air Austral to embark these patients.
"
We are approved to carry two stretchers, we had a special authorization to upgrade to four,
" said Amine Tadjadit, airworthiness maintenance manager at Air Austral.
The trip to the Metropolis will last 11 hours.
For this first, extraordinary means were implemented by the Regional Health Agency (ARS) and the University Hospital (CHU) of Reunion: 15 caregivers, including three doctors and four nurses from the Samu in Paris, as well as that 800 kg of medical equipment were thus mobilized.
“
These Covid patients have pulmonary fragility which requires being very careful.
There we are on four patients transported, it is an enormous logistics, an entire organization that is exceptional
”, comments Bertrand Guihard.
Each patient will have 9,000 liters of oxygen available, more than the 7,000 they will normally need according to doctors.
This quantity "
is one of the points for which we have limited the number of patients (evacuated), because the quantity (of oxygen) that we can afford on board remains limited,
" adds the doctor.
At this stage, the establishment of another such operation has not yet been decided.
Between February 20 and February 26, 884 new cases of Covid, including 7 deaths, were identified by the ARS, an incidence rate of 104 per 100,000.
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