hospital fears second wave “worse than first”

Arming of additional resuscitation beds, deprogramming of operations, cancellation of holidays, call for volunteers: “already in difficulty”, the hospital rings the general mobilization so as not to be overwhelmed by the “second wave” of the Covid epidemic -19, which could turn out to be “worse than the first”.

“The hospital is already running at full capacity when we know that we will have more patients to take care of,” Martin Hirsch warned Friday on RTL for whom “the hospital is already in difficulty”.

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The great maneuvers which are accelerating attest to this: the ARS of Hauts-de-France on Thursday asked hospitals in the region to arm 96 additional intensive care beds. “We are able to go up to 7,700 beds within a period of less than 15 days”, for his part assured Olivier Véran, Minister of Health.

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Patient transfers and deprogramming

Eight first patients were also transferred Friday from Auvergne Rhône-Alpes to hospitals in Bordeaux, Poitiers and Brive, announced the ARS of Nouvelle Aquitaine, a region more spared. “We are at 30% deprogramming”, explained Jean Pinson, director of the hospitals of Saint-Denis and Gonesse.

“We know that the curfews will not take effect for two to three weeks, which in the current period represents an eternity”, explains Lamine Gharbi, president of the Federation of Private Hospitals (FHP) whose establishments take in charge “on average 30% of Covid patients in intensive care and in medical services at the national level” and have also had to start deprogramming operations.

“It’s going to be even more complicated …”, testifies an anesthetist-resuscitator from a Parisian hospital. Because the health situation continues to deteriorate.

Friday at 2 p.m. in Île-de-France, there were “64% of the sheaves beds occupied by Covid patients”, tweeted the director of the ARS Aurélien Rousseau, calling on the population to “deprogram” their “social interactions” .

Lack of nursing staff

For starters, seasonal activity is much more important. “We are in the autumn period and, not to mention the pandemic, our resuscitation services are already almost full,” said Ferhat Meziani, head of intensive medicine and resuscitation at the CHU of the city of Strasbourg, where we are now close to the threshold. maximum alert.

And this time, the hospital will have to welcome patients with Covid but also others, the impact of the absence of their care during the first wave having proved too great.

However, although respirators and drugs essential for resuscitation (curares, hypnotics) have been stocked and the organization, support and treatments run in, the workforce, severely affected by the first health crisis, is still at half mast.

A chronic shortage of personnel to which must be added sick leaves. And more than half of the nurses are “in a situation of professional exhaustion”, had alerted mid-October the National Order of Nurses.

“Dreadful month of November”

The Ministry of Health has already launched an appeal by creating the Renfort-RH platform. The AP-HP did the same by distributing a form for “mobilization of reinforcements in medical and paramedical personnel”.

Some establishments have also canceled their staff vacations, especially during All Saints’ Day. The director of the AP-HP confirmed that leave had been deprogrammed for many staff in his hospitals. “But for others, we preferred that they take vacation now, before this dreadful month of November,” he said on Friday.

“This second wave is more difficult to manage for hospital staff because we can no longer count on the same reinforcement in personnel from other regions”, explains in Le Figaro the president of the Hospital Federation of France (FHF), Frédéric Valletoux.