Coronavirus: masks, tests, chloroquine… caregivers seize the Council of State again

The caregivers' anger does not weaken in the middle of a coronavirus crisis. For the second time in a few days, unions are seizing the Council of State to force the government to go further in its fight against the Covid-19. After having examined on Sunday a request for total containment - which it rejected while demanding from the government several details - the highest French administrative court will sit in emergency again this Thursday.

On the menu of this interim liberty filed in particular in the name of the right to life and the precautionary principle: the requirement of masks for the whole population, massive screening and authorization for doctors and hospitals administering chloroquine, this molecule which Professor Didier Raoult, in Marseille, ensures that it produces spectacular effects.

VIDEO. What is chloroquine, a miracle cure for coronavirus according to Professor Raoult?

"We are told that we are at war, but for the moment we are only seeing propaganda. What we are waiting for is now a war industry ”, summarizes Me Nicolas Choley, lawyer for Smaer, a doctors' union, and Infin'idels, a union of liberal nurses behind the appeal. To put an end to the system D which prevails at present, the latter therefore request a requisition, by the State, not only of the stocks of masks held by individuals and businesses, but also of the factories to produce them "on a scale industrial "in France, as well as the ban on exports.

"We have been promised these masks for a month"

"How is France, in 2020, not able to provide masks to its population or even to its caregivers, which is the norm in other countries? Wonders, incredulous, Daniel Latil d'Albertas, president of Smaer. For the H1N1 crisis in 2009, however, we had received everything we needed… it is quite incomprehensible. "

“We have been promised these masks for a month and have been lied to! The pharmacies receive half of what they order, and again, there is talk of surgical masks, which are far from effectively protecting, annoys her side Michelle Drouin, president of Infin'idels. We are reduced to making calls for donations from individuals and businesses. We contacted DIY stores, pet stores, car garages, she lists. Sometimes the stocks that the pharmacies receive are expired, the elastics do not hold, one of my colleagues has received… masks for children. We are so poor that we take everything! Some patients, who want to help, are reduced to making us out of old sheets ... ”

Beyond the masks, the nurse also points to the lack of gowns, charlottes, overshoes and gloves essential for treating the patients of Covid-19, several cases of which have appeared in the Narbonne region where she practices. “The nurses are in a panic, and there is something! "

The misunderstanding around the lack of massive screening

"In Italy today, one in eight patients is a caregiver, it's a disaster," adds Daniel Latil of Albertas, who enjoins the State to finally have a clear discourse on the subject. I do not understand how a director general of health could tell the caregivers that they did not need these protections, "he sighs, also demanding the implementation of massive screening," which has proven in China and South Korea ”. The reason? The number of patients with no symptoms, the proportion of which is at least 50%, according to several studies. Supporting tests, they could then be strictly confined, without risking contaminating those around them ... and even treated, thanks to chloroquine.

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This molecule, used as an antimalarial and successfully tested by Pr Raoult at the Institut hospitalo-universitaire (IHU) in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), is at the heart of a controversy that embarrasses the top of the State. Pending the return of several ongoing clinical trials, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran authorized its use on Monday, but only for "severe, hospital forms, on the collective decision of doctors and under strict supervision".

Too restrictive, judge the two unions. "In an ideal world, we would wait for the return of trials, with cohorts of patients ... But in an ideal world, we would also have masks," laughs Dr. Lalil d'Albertas. As a result, we have confinement. This is how we managed the plague in the 16th century or cholera in the 19th… ”he sighs. “Clearly, the caregivers' unions are asking that France leave the third world! "Concludes Mr. Choley.