The number of people admitted to island hospitals is increasing. Two patients were evacuated from Ajaccio to Marseille to avoid possible saturation. Dr Laurent Serpin, head of the Mercy reanimation service, recounts the fourth wave.
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Covid patients have in recent days been evacuated from Bastia to Ajaccio then to Marseille. What is the situation at Mercy?
These are three people who were first evacuated from Bastia to Ajaccio, two of them were then sent to Marseille. These are young patients, aged between 35 and 40 years old, with extracorporeal circulation, who have developed very critical Covids.
Usually, we keep these patients, whose hospital stays are very long, in our department. Due to the current crisis in Corsica (the white plan has been triggered), it was decided that they would be directed to Marseille so as not to traffic Mercy.
Because we are afraid of being overwhelmed by the patients of Corse-du-Sud in the near future. So two patients were evacuated to the North Hospital of Marseille on Monday. Another patient, more standard, under a respirator, was evacuated on Sunday from Bastia to Ajaccio due to lack of space in Bastia.
Among the people currently in the Mercy intensive care unit, were some vaccinated before being affected by the Covid?
Any. In Ajaccio, all patients in intensive care are unvaccinated patients. They are rather young, between 17 and 62 years old. With the exception of one patient, they are all Corsican residents. Currently in intensive care, we have six patients. We had eight on Monday.
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Is a 17-year-old patient an unprecedented situation for your department?
This patient arrived Thursday evening. He is currently ventilated, in serious condition. We are a small center, so everything that happens to us is necessarily new. We knew that statistically, some patients were rather young with significant comorbidity, such as obesity or immunosuppressed situations (transplants, leukemia).
Today, we see young patients appearing everywhere who do not necessarily have co-morbidities. They are often between 30 and 40 years old. They have severe pneumonia and their only common point is that they are not vaccinated.
Do you fear the arrival in your department of other very young patients?
We are so afraid of this situation that we prefer for the moment to reassure ourselves by telling ourselves that the case of our 17-year-old patient without comorbidity is unique. Our fear is that this epidemic will gradually change target. Because the less the virus will be able to spread among part of the population, the more it will spread to other subjects. Unless everyone gets vaccinated. Because once everyone is vaccinated, the serious forms no longer exist. We can still have the Covid but we are sick in bed, four or five days. Nothing protects as much as the vaccine. It should also be borne in mind that vaccination is limited in time. It is absolutely necessary to redo it every year so as not to fall back into the same configurations.
Do you understand, as the head of the intensive care unit, that people do not get vaccinated?
I understand that we are concerned about respecting our freedom and the possibility of expressing our free will, of expressing a doubt that may be legitimate. These are in fact vaccines that have not been fifteen years old. But we must not lose sight of the fact that we are in a situation which is not ordinary. We are facing a global pandemic with aggravations, the arrival of different highly contaminating variants, even China is starting to get carried away again.
It is a situation which generates a restriction of freedoms. But if people who demonstrate are potentially right to voice their doubts (and they should not be stigmatized), they must take into account that their freedom ends where that of others begins. I can hear that we put up signs “no to compulsory vaccination” but what serious alternative do these demonstrators have to offer?
Personally, I consider that it is necessary to be vaccinated out of duty for humanity. Faced with this pandemic, we cannot be individualistic. To be vaccinated is an act for the good of all because it makes it possible to avoid the serious form of contamination. And by achieving global immunization, we can regain our freedoms. We must be able to keep businesses open, continue to work, this is a vital question. The re-containment would be catastrophic.
England, where more than 70% of the population is vaccinated, is not far from announcing a global immunization. Every time you vaccinate against an infectious disease, you get global immunization. Scientifically, it is relatively simple. It is thus observed that the Delta variant is less present in the regions which have recorded a high rate of vaccinations.
Why do you think the vaccination figures in Corsica have stagnated?
We were pioneers at the start. We were cited as an example, then maybe we didn’t communicate enough anymore, I can’t believe that there are so many recalcitrant people.
Do you fear a deterioration of the situation on the island?
Yes, I am very afraid that we will be overwhelmed within a fortnight. In addition, we are faced with the problem of our limited staff. We cannot open all the beds in the short-lived intensive care unit due to the lack of paramedics. For a year and a half, our services have been in a daily pandemic.
Since the last wave in April, we have not known a single day without having to treat a Covid patient. The most serious patients sometimes stay in our department for four months. In addition to these waves of Covid, we have experienced an upsurge in a significant number of pathologies (cardiac, drug poisoning) of patients who had stopped receiving treatment.
We have also been confronted with an increase in the number of suicides and summer arrived very early this year, with the tourist mass and excessive trauma. We are constantly on the go. The staff are exhausted.
Is life in your intensive care unit very different today compared to the early days of the epidemic?
When the first wave came, everyone was on the bridge, we thought it wouldn’t last long, we were all very motivated, there was a feeling of imminent peril. There, the situation is still serious but we now know that it can last a long time. But we know that it is now controllable, thanks to vaccination. However, we are seeing unvaccinated people arriving in a very serious condition.
We take care of them of course with the same force, with the same desire, but it’s really annoying because we say to ourselves that it could have been avoided. No one knows how things will turn out. But what is certain is that vaccination is the only solution to control this phenomenon.
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