Toughest weeks ahead in coronavirus fight, warns French PM


Reuters | Updated: 29-03-2020 01:16 IST | Created: 29-03-2020 01:16 IST
Toughest weeks ahead in coronavirus fight, warns French PM
  • Country:
  • France

The next two weeks will be the toughest yet in the fight against coronavirus in France, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe warned on Saturday as his government raced to add intensive care beds and source protective gear. The outbreak initially took hold in eastern France, where hospitals have become overwhelmed, and has been spreading west. Doctors in the greater Paris region have warned their intensive care units will be full by the end of the weekend.

"We are fighting a battle that will take time," Philippe said in a televised address. "The first two weeks of April will be harder than the two we have just lived through." To free up intensive care beds in worst-hit areas, the army and emergency workers were this weekend stepping up the transfer of patients to less-affected regions, using a military helicopter and a specially-adapted TGV train.

By Saturday, the coronavirus had claimed 2,314 lives in France, with more than 37,575 confirmed cases, according to official figures. The government tally only accounts for those dying in hospital but authorities say they will be able to compile data on deaths in retirement homes from next week, which is likely to result in a marked increase in registered fatalities.

In southern France, the Occitanie health authority reported 11 deaths in a nursing home near Montpellier. Dozens more elderly people are known to have died in separate cases. Health Minister Olivier Veran said he would be instructing care homes to isolate every single elderly resident in an effort to curb the virus among the most vulnerable. "We need to go further to protect the vulnerable in nursing homes," Veran said.

As the number of cases balloon and hospitals struggle, doctors, carers and police have complained of an acute shortage of protective gear. Veran said the government had ordered more than 1 billion face masks, most from China, to build up supplies, with the country using some 40 million every week during the crisis.

Hospitals have scrambled to add intensive car beds and cancelled non-essential operations. There were now 10,000 intensive car beds nationwide, double the capacity when the outbreak began, and another 4,500 were targeted, Veran said. But doctors warned beds alone were insufficient.

"We lack manpower," Djillali Annane, head of intensive care at the Raymond Poincare hospital on the edge of Paris, told BFM TV. Medical students are being drafted in to help ease the staffing crunch.

France's 67 million people had a collective responsibility to obey a lockdown unprecedented during peacetime and now in its 11th day, Philippe said. A decision would be taken late next week on a further extension beyond April 15.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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