The 4th wave of Covid-19 is overwhelming Marseille’s health services. Record attendance in emergencies, risk of saturation in intensive care and lack of staff: Marseille hospitals are “one of the most impacted CHUs in mainland France”, their leaders lamented on Monday.
The Public Assistance-Hospitals of Marseille (AP-HM) wanted to sound the alarm, on the eve of the evacuation to Strasbourg of two new patients in intensive care, including a 22-year-old. The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region has an extremely high incidence rate, roughly double the national average, at 587 per 100,000 inhabitants, which “partly explains the situation in our hospitals”, commented the new director general of the AP-HM François Crémieux, surrounded by around twenty department heads.
Decrease in the average age in intensive care
“The AP-HM in number of hospitalized patients is indeed one of the most impacted CHUs in mainland France”, insisted the head of intensive care of Timone Lionel Velly, specifying however that the Marseille situation remained “largely behind” that of the Polynesia or the Antilles. Of the 67 patients in Covid-19 intensive care, 89% were not vaccinated, the average age in intensive care has dropped to 54 years, with a ratio of women higher than previous waves at around 50/50. And the AP-HM warns that it will hardly be able to go beyond these 67 intensive care beds dedicated to Covid patients, because of the leave of caregivers and difficulties in recruiting, nurses in particular.
The emergencies are in a “real crisis” with record peaks of activity of nearly 600 patients over 24 hours, with Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 patients during this summer period. And the return to Marseille will see tourists leave but a large number of Marseillais return from vacations from North African countries highly impacted by the coronavirus. “We have very strong concerns about what will happen”, alarmed Professor Jean-Luc Jouve, president of the medical committee of the establishment.
The latter also pointed out the very strong disparities with an overrepresentation in intensive care of the inhabitants of the most disadvantaged districts, in the north of the city. Likewise, vaccination remains fairly low there due to information difficulties, the lack of vaccination centers and the lack of public transport, as well as Didier Raoult’s YouTube videos, said Pr Jouve. Globally in favor of “the conviction more than the brutal obligation” of vaccination, Didier Raoult is also in open conflict with the management of the AP-HM, which does not want its extension beyond his retirement. August.