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Coronavirus: how France is preparing for the worst-case scenario


“We must prepare our health system to face a possible pandemic spread of the virus and therefore to (its) circulation on the national territory. This Saturday, behind her desk, Agnès Buzyn, on the eve of her resignation, looks serious when she says these words, heavy with meaning, to evoke the coronavirus. And for good reason, a pandemic is an XXL version, on a global scale, of an epidemic.

“Myself, I was surprised to hear him say that, because it does not seem to me that we are at the stage of thinking about a pandemic. The operation is delicate: you have to be ready to deal with all eventualities without spreading panic, ”explains Jean-Paul Hamon.

Like fifty health professionals (hospitals, city doctors, nurse, medical doctor, etc.), the president of the Federation of Doctors of France will be at the Ministry of Health this Tuesday morning, at 10 a.m., for a meeting convened at this meeting. topic. Logically in the presence of the new, newly appointed minister, Olivier Véran.

“Prevention rather than reaction”

Officially baptized “meeting of mobilization of the health system”, it was supposed to be led by the minister in person, who meanwhile declared candidate to lead the LREM list at the town hall of Paris. But beware, it is not because we are preparing for a pandemic that it will happen, the substance of the General Directorate of Health (DGS), which we joined this Sunday, specifies.

“It is a question of being in prevention, rather than in reaction deciphering François Braun, the boss of the Samu. We are used to doing this type of point, this allows all professionals to be at the same level of information and to coordinate during health crises. We can be called catastrophists, but better be ready, just in case… ”

A meeting that comes as Covid-2019, the official name of the coronavirus, has made its first fatal victim in France, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist who has been hospitalized since the end of January at the Parisian hospital Bichat, and that the Screening tests were positive for a twelfth patient in France, this Saturday, a Briton in his fifties who shared the chalet with five other of his compatriots in Contamines-Montjoie (Haute-Savoie).

But how do you prepare for a pandemic? “By implementing all of the prevention and precautionary measures or even by planning the care paths for the sick, depending on the region, without excluding innovative paths”, details the DGS, who points out that a system, called Orsan, exists for this type of situation.

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