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COVID-19

Coronavirus: Vets lend equipment to breaking-point Paris hospitals

Health authorities in the greater Paris region have called on local veterinary surgeons to donate life-saving equipment as hospitals struggle to cope with surging coronavirus cases.

Published: 31 March 2020 17:22 CEST
Coronavirus: Vets lend equipment to breaking-point Paris hospitals
Medics say Paris hospitals are at breaking point. Photo: AFP

The greater Paris Île-de-France region has the highest number of coronavirus cases in France, although some of these are cases that have been transferred to the specialist hospitals in the capital.

Health chiefs in the region warned at the end of last week that they were approaching the limits of their capacity and since then numbers of confirmed cases in France have continued to rise.

On Monday local health chiefs told French media that “the Ministry of Health has approached the Veterinary Medical Council to ask what kind of anaesthesia and resuscitation equipment veterinarians have in their facilities and to identify which ones they can make available.”

And veterinary hospitals from across the region have rushed to help, donating life-saving equipment including ventilators and monitoring devices.

French newspaper Le Parisien reported that 50 ventilators and 40 anaesthesia monoitoring devices have been loaned to hospitals by veterinary practices across the region.

On Friday The Local spoke to Célestin-Alexis Agbessi, a doctor at the Bichat Hospital in the 18th arrondissement in Paris, who said the hospital's 26 intensive care beds were all full.

READ ALSO ANALYSIS When will the coronavirus epidemic peak in France?

Over the weekend the total number of intensive care beds in the region was increased from 1,500 to 2,000 but Dr Agbessi said that would still not be enough.

“If the epidemic follows a growth pattern comparable to what we have seen in Italy and China, it's clear that we're only at the beginning,” he said.

Patients are also set to be transferred out of Paris to hospitals in Brittany, which has seen a lower number of cases.

Health authorities had already been airlifting some patients out of the badly-hit eastern areas of France, and have also comissioned special 'medical trains' to transfer people to facilities in other parts of the country.

But on Wednesday the first medical train from Île-de-France will leave for Brittany. 

READ ALSO Which areas of France are worst affected by coronavirus?

A military hospital has also been constructed in Mulhouse in eastern France to take some of the pressure off local hospitals.

 

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HEALTH

France’s Covid-19 app to be ‘put to sleep’

France's Covid-tracker app, used for months for the all-important 'health pass' will be switched off today, health officials have confirmed.

Published: 30 June 2023 13:29 CEST
France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off. 

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate. 

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