Many public health specialists have been calling for the implementation of such a strategy for several weeks, it is now a priority for the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP): limiting the transmission chains of Covid-19, particularly within families, by identifying and isolating potentially contaminating people. And this to avoid any new epidemic outbreak as the phase of deconfinement, scheduled from May 11, looms.
In collaboration with local authorities, primarily the Paris City Hall and the Seine-Saint-Denis Departmental Council, the AP-HP has been experimenting since Wednesday April 15 with a monitoring system on three pilot sites: La Pitié-Salpêtrière ( 13e district), Bichat hospitals (18e) – Louis-Mourier in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), and Avicenne in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis). To stem the transmission of the virus to the entourage, diagnosis, equipment and accommodation in the hotel if necessary are offered to infected people whose condition does not require or no longer hospitalization.
Called “Covisan”, “This project is part of the national policy of deconfinement and prevention of a second wave. We operate on an equal footing with city medicine, it allows them to include their own patients “, precise to World Martin Hirsch, Director General of the AP-HP.
The initiative had been rumored on Thursday by Sébastien Bazin, CEO of the Accor hotel group, who had announced, on France Inter, to make available part of its establishments for these patients with little or no symptoms. For the time being, only three hotels in the group, near the four hospitals concerned, have been mobilized. There will be no medicalization of hotels in the strict sense. “This is where our experience of having followed 50,000 patients remotely through the Covidom platform for a month is useful, we have established a system for tracking people who are carriers of Covid”, ensures Martin Hirsch, who specifies that the Red Cross will also be mobilized. To carry out the screening tests, the intervention teams will be made up of nurses and interns.
Test value for Accor
The scheme, under the aegis of the Ile-de-France prefecture and the Regional Health Agency, will be carried out on a voluntary basis. For people who want to stay at home, “Teams will be formed to support them and help them organize, check that they have personal protective equipment, sums up Jean-Louis Missika, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of town planning. And to prevent them from going to the stores, we will deliver fresh meals or products to them. ”
In Seine-Saint-Denis, which is one of the departments most affected by excess mortality linked to the Covid-19 epidemic, epidemiological surveys will be carried out alongside the detection of local “clusters”. “The idea is to mobilize a set of partners: social services, associations, social landlords, because beyond the health dimension, it is necessary to articulate social support for families and children”, explains Stéphane Troussel, president of the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council.
The duration of this operation has not yet been fixed. The pilot phase will be carried out during “A few days to learn as much as possible, says Martin Hirsch. If these pilots give favorable results, they will be useful to widen and duplicate the device. ” This limited reception also seems to have the value of a test for Accor. However, the group, which has 1,700 establishments in France, claims to be able to rapidly ramp up. According to Mr. Bazin, there are already “More than 300 volunteer hotels”.
” Cost price “
“The operation costs us nothing and does not bring us any returns”, specifies the number one hotel in Europe, of which nearly 300 establishments have already been welcoming nursing staff or truck drivers for the past few weeks. In contrast, the AP-HP – which already uses the premises of the national training center of the French Tennis Federation, in the 16e district of Paris and a neighboring Sainte-Périne hospital building – should pay 30 to 50 euros, ” cost price “, per room occupied by hotel owners.
The opening of intermediary structures to quarantine patients with simple or moderate forms of Covid-19 has already been implemented abroad, such as in China, Spain or Italy. Since the start of the pandemic, the Accor group has itself opened some of its hotels in South Korea and Spain. So far in France, if patients with Covid-19 have been isolated, it is primarily to relieve hospitals under high tension. As in the Pyrénées-Orientales, where, since March 26, a hotel on the outskirts of Perpignan has freed up hospital beds.
The AP-HP initiative comes “A little late but better late than never, valued Professor Eric Caumes, head of the infectious diseases department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. This is a policy which should concern the whole of France, it is quite symbolic of local or regional initiatives which only testify that there is no pilot on the republican plane “. According to him, it would be urgent to attack “clusters” even larger than the family unit: “What about the big chains of transmission in the hospitals of the AP-HP, intermediate medico-social structures, homes for workers and migrants? This is a real problem. “
Our selection of articles on the coronavirus
–
