Covid-19: in Toulouse, hospitals and clinics under high voltage
The Regional Health Agency (ARS Occitanie) has placed hospitals and clinics at the highest level of the white plan. The Covid-19 epidemic but also the flu and the usual winter pathologies are causing difficulty in health establishments which have already been weakened for several months.
The end of December is often synonymous with hospital tension with the arrival of winter pathologies. This is even more the case in 2021. The fifth wave of Covid-19, which is not yet at its peak in Haute-Garonne, has forced clinics and hospitals to close many beds and to organize their activity differently. Thursday, December 16, the Regional Health Agency (ARS Occitanie) strictly has level 4 of the regional white plan, the highest, synonymous with deprogramming of all activities that may be and recall of staff on leave if necessary.
If the rate of coronavirus contamination is unprecedented (541 cases per 100,000 inhabitants), the number of patients hospitalized for severe forms of Covid-19 is currently not at the level of the second wave of autumn 2020. But it is is still increasing and has already surpassed that of August. There is great tension in establishments that are still looking for nursing staff.
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Always a shortage of staff
“There are certainly fewer hospitalized patients, but the forces involved are less and the bed closures more important. This is what puts us in difficulty, we are, every day, close to bed, in each establishment” , explains Fabrice Derbias, director of the Toulouse division for the Ramsay Santé group, which brings together the clinics of L’Union, Croix du Sud (Quint-Fonsegrives) and Les Cèdres (Cornebarrieu). In these three sites, around 200 beds out of 1,500 have been closed for two weeks. “The thirty or so Covid patients that we take in have had a greater impact on our organizations than on previous occasions. The tension in human resources is extreme and, while the holidays arrive, we do not want to consider recalling staff”, adds Fabrice Derbias.
At the Rive Gauche clinic in Toulouse, the deprogramming of operations has also been on the agenda for ten days. “We are already at the maximum of what we can postpone. Between the cancellations of intervention because the patients have the Covid or are in contact, the staff shortage, the end of year holidays, everyday life is really very complicated “, confirms Olivier Geoffroy, director of the Rive Gauche clinic.
Hospital emergencies are very busy, pediatrics is overflowing
At the end of the chain, the Toulouse University Hospital Center (CHU) suffers just as much and it is in emergencies that the impact is most felt. “The hospital is full. The number of emergency room visits is unprecedented and there is no more room”, summarizes Dr. Béatrice Riu-Poulenc, responsible for the multipurpose resuscitation of the Purpan hospital at the Toulouse University Hospital. “At the strongest moments of the hospitalizations for Covid-19, there were confinements, curfews. This is no longer the case, we no longer have this break. We find accident victims but also the flu, rhino virus and viral infectious pathologies that we no longer saw with barrier gestures. Every day, around sixty people over the age of 75 go to the emergency room. Pediatrics is overflowing with the epidemic of bronchiolitis; now every day over 16s are referred to adult emergencies. Not to mention the sick caregivers themselves or in case of contact and having to look after the children. The Covid is breaking the camel’s back “detail Dr Riu-Poulenc. For this doctor, the concern is all the greater since everything is already complicated despite the deprogramming: “Our room for maneuver is minimal because we must treat all patients, Covid and non-Covid”.
Friday, December 17, the CHU welcomed 99 Covid patients including 23 in intensive care and 13 in intensive or critical care. “Around 45% of the patients admitted to multipurpose intensive care units, at Rangueil and Purpan, are Covid patients. And that makes us all the more bitchy that 90% of them are unvaccinated”, concludes Dr Béatrice Riu- Poulenc.