Hospital pressure increased further on Monday, April 5, with more than 5,400 Covid-19 patients in intensive care, according to daily figures from Public Health France.
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On Monday there were 5,433 people in the intensive care units of hospitals, which treat the most serious forms of the disease, against 5,341 the day before, and 4,872 a week ago.
There were 92 new admissions in 24 hours, says the health agency.
This indicator is closely monitored by the health authorities, who fear hospital congestion, in the middle of the third wave of the novel coronavirus epidemic.
The peak of the second wave, which amounted in mid-November to 4,903 patients in critical care, was exceeded last Monday.
It is still far from that of the first wave (a little more than 7,000), but this Monday, Olivier Véran, Minister of Health acknowledged on TF1 that the country could border this peak of resuscitation reached during the first wave.
At the same time, he assured that the reception capacity of the heaviest patients was now increased "
to 8000 armed resuscitation beds
".
To cope with the influx of patients, President Emmanuel Macron announced last Wednesday “
additional reinforcements
” in intensive care and go “
in the coming days
” to more than 10,000 beds, against 7665 currently.
The number of hospitalizations is also on the rise, with 12,878 Covid patients - a highest since November 2020 - during the last 7 days.
In 24 hours, 197 new deaths were recorded.
In total, since the start of the epidemic, the disease has killed 96,975 people, including 70,799 in hospital.
The positivity rate, which measures the percentage of people positive for Covid-19 out of all those tested, was 7.7%, or 0.1 less than the day before.
According to health authorities, nearly 9.3 million people have received at least one injection of a Covid-19 vaccine, and more than 3.1 million people have received 2 doses.
