Never two without three ?
While a new health defense council will meet on Wednesday March 31, the President of the Republic could speak the same evening and announce new measures, according to Franceinfo.
Faced with a deteriorating health situation, an occupancy rate in intensive care units approaching 90%, deprogramming which is increasing and the threat of triage of patients in Île-de-France, several doctors ask the president of the Republic to tighten the screw again.
Several hypotheses are mentioned.
Read also: The French hospital sick with its bureaucracy
Extension of the list of confined departments
Could new departments join the 19 departments with “
reinforced braking
” measures
?
Last Friday, the Minister of Health presented a new list of 16 new departments placed under enhanced surveillance.
These are Ain, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Ardennes, Indre-et-Loire, Isère, Jura, Loir-et-Cher, Loire, Lozère, La Marne, Meuse, Orne, Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Vaucluse and Yonne.
According to the latest report from Public Health France, the number of emergency visits for suspected Covid-19 was on the rise in all metropolitan regions except Corsica and New Aquitaine.
The most marked increases were observed in Île-de-France (+ 27%), Grand Est (+ 25%), Center-Val-de Loire (+ 25%), Brittany (+ 25%) and Auvergne-Rhône- Alps (+ 17% or +150 passages).
Therefore, are we moving towards an expansion of the “braking measures” already in force in 19 departments?
Measures not strong enough, estimates for example the infectious disease specialist Gilles Pialoux.
For the head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at Tenon hospital, they "have no effect".
He is alarmed by a “
at the same time”
which
“lets the virus circulate”
with “measures
which mean that nothing is done”.
He calls on the government not to underestimate the epidemic resumption which has "
already passed the second wave
".
Read also: Covid-19: Is your department at risk of being reconfigured?
Strict national reconfinement
The ultimatum of sorting patients was brandished last Sunday by 41 Parisian resuscitators and emergency physicians including Professor Bruno Riou, crisis medical director of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris.
"
We will be forced to sort the patients in order to save as many lives as possible
", they warned in the Journal du Dimanche.
"
This sorting will concern all patients, Covid and non-Covid, in particular for the access of adult patients to critical care
", they complete.
Differentiating patients according to their chance of survival is "
the red line not to be crossed
" for Bruno Le Maire and could lead the government to take radical measures.
Strict national containment would make it possible to reduce the number of contaminations which currently hover around 30,000 per day, against 10,000 at the end of November.
Effects of the November containment on the number of new daily contaminations (report 25 March) Public health France
For the executive, the urgency is also at the level of the intensive care units which record an occupancy rate close to that of the peak of the second wave.
Number of patients in intensive care (report 25 March) Public health France
"If we confine harshly to April 1, we will have 3200 people in sheaves three weeks later in Île-de-France,
alert on France Inter Professor Gilles Pialoux, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at Tenon hospital
, that means say 400% of normal capacity in sheave.
You choose one in two patients who will have to be operated ”
.
To read also: Jean-Louis Teboul: "There has been no real increase in permanent resuscitation beds"
Closure of schools
For two weeks, schools have been under reinforced surveillance.
In the 19 confined departments, a new health protocol has been put in place, thus instituting the closure of a class in the first case of Covid identified.
"
If we take no action, the risk is that schools close by themselves
"
,
observes a minister from USAinformations.
Having refused to do so for the moment, the government for its part admitted that sending all schoolchildren home was not a "
taboo
" but would
only
intervene "
as a last necessity
".
Even if this could lower the number of contaminations, closing schools represents a social and psychological cost for students, especially those with poor digital access.
An opinion shared by Professor Bruno Lina, virologist and researcher at the International Center for Infectious Disease Research at INSERM.
Member of the Scientific Council, he is worried about
"too important negative consequences
" and the absence
"of current element allowing us to say that one would better manage the epidemic if the school had been closed".
Read also: Classes closed in the first case of Covid: will the new protocol empty the schools of their students?
The status quo
Until now, this is the line held, sometimes against all odds, by the President of the Republic.
"
Hold on, together
", "
whatever the cost
" while demonstrating "
pragmatism
".
These are the keywords repeated at the Élysée.
Read also: Emmanuel Macron caught in the turmoil of the epidemic
The objective is to win a race against time by focusing on the acceleration of the vaccination campaign.
To date, 7.8 million French people have received at least one dose of vaccines, or nearly 12% of the French population.