“The Swiss instructions are just as much …

Eric Bonvin, what is the situation at the Valais Hospital this Sunday?

Today we have 135 hospital patients at our home including 23 in intensive care. Of the 274 Valais patients suffering from Coronavirus hospitalized since the start of the pandemic, 92 have come out sufficiently recovered to return home.

Seven of the 36 patients who have been discharged from intensive care to date since the start of the pandemic

A reader looks back at the announcement of the week with the first patient to leave intensive care. Have there been others since?

Yes, and to date, 7 patients have left intensive care, in the recovery phase, out of the 36 treated since the start of the pandemic.

Currently, Valais has a mortality rate of 3.9% if we refer to the number of cases and 0.15 ‰ if we refer to the whole population? On the Swiss and international level, in comparison where is our canton located?

Today, any interpretation of these figures remains delicate. We can only calculate the real mortality rate once we know all the cases and their outcome, and for that, we will have to wait for the end of the pandemic. Concerning the rate of 3.9%, it refers for the moment to the number of postive tested cases and not to the number of real cases, because at present, we do not know the number of people contaminated by COVID- 19. If we knew it then we could have an actual mortality rate and it would, in all likelihood, be well below 3.9%. The death rate refers to the population per thousand inhabitants and it is currently 0.15 ‰ which places it above the result for Switzerland which is 0.06 ‰ and less than that of Ticino which is 0.47 ‰. This rate can be superimposed on that of the number of cases by canton.

You have received 100,000 francs in donations to fight the coronavirus. A reader wonders what the money will be used for, and is this the biggest donation received by the hospital to date?

This fund is intended to finance any urgent needs to cope with the consequences of the pandemic, in terms of social benefits for our staff, logistics or replenishment. The remaining balance will be entirely devoted to research or training aimed at taking advantage of the experience we are gaining to better prepare us for the possibility of a new pandemic or another major scourge. The Valais Hospital has already benefited from more substantial donations, but as regards the crisis generated by the Coronavirus, it is by far the most important at present. We hope that there will be others, but we are already very grateful for all the gestures, modest as well as more substantial, which encourage and touch us very much.

Isn’t there a contradiction between the recommendation “stay at home” and the absence of total confinement: this weekend we had the impression that if we were going for a walk, we were a kind of ” criminal ”asked a reader?

If this reader respects social distance very strictly, in particular by excluding any gathering of more than 5 people, by keeping her distances of at least 2 meters when she meets someone and by avoiding any risky behavior likely to engulf our intensive care, she is by no means a criminal. Staying at home is just an easier attitude to respect all of that, but a ride is obviously not prohibited. In Switzerland we have opted to leave a small margin of individual appreciation. Applied scrupulously, these instructions are at least as effective as that of total confinement and aims at the same end: avoiding close social contact which is the real source of the transmission of the virus. The path chosen by Switzerland calls for more civility and individual responsibility than total confinement while attenuating the undesirable psychosocial effects that it can generate.

You can ask your questions to Eric Bonvin by sending an email to [email protected]. Answers to your questions can also be found on the Valais Hospital website: www.hopitalvs.ch/coronavirus