Coronavirus: private hospitals want all caregivers to be tested

the latest official report concerning the coronavirus pandemic which continues to rage in France reports 44,450 confirmed cases and 3,024 deaths in hospital. Measures to combat the spread of the disease continue, with the extension of the confinement until Wednesday, April 15.

Every day, healthcare professionals join forces to treat patients with Covid-19, despite limited resources. Shortage of masks, overwhelmed nursing staff… The health sector is in tight flux. So, to face the pandemic as best as possible, the private hospital is fully mobilizing alongside the public hospital sector.

4,000 intensive care beds across the country

“For three weeks we have deprogrammed all of our surgical activity to free up space in healthcare establishments, put in place white plans (…) to arm intensive care beds”assures Lamine Gharbi, president of the Federation of private hospitalization (FHP), on France info. These efforts would be particularly visible in Île-de-France, in Hauts-de-France and in the Grand Est.

According to the doctor of pharmacy, all French hospitals will soon have 4,000 intensive care beds. “Please note, these are not resuscitation beds as we are used to seeing. These are intensive care beds that we will ‘upgrade’”specifies the president of the FHP to Franceinfo.

“We lack syringe pumps, nurses and nurses in service”

He also deplores the lack of resources available to health professionals. At issue: the seven essential elements of resuscitation. These are syringe pumps, medicines, masks, goggles, respirators, nurses and doctors. “Today, there is a shortage of syringe pumps, male and female nurses on dutyreports Lamine Gharbi. I call for national solidarity so that we can, in the territories that are not yet affected, mobilize either in equipment or in human personnel..”

The president of the FHP does not stop there. If he recalls the lack of masks, he also warns of the absence of screening tests. “I ask for systematic screening of all caregivers so that they know themselves if they are carriersurges Lamine Gharbi. It’s appalling not to know and we see that there are dramas and that everyone has an identity withdrawal that is unbearable.”

Only “symptomatic” healthcare professionals can be tested

The lack of screening is part of the reproaches made to the French government concerning the management of the health crisis that we are going through. “In the epidemic phase, the principle is to no longer test systematically. There is no right to be tested”he defends himself on the page of its site dedicated to the coronavirus. The criteria for being tested have even been narrowed. If on March 26, six cases were screened, the government has increased to five, with stricter conditions than last week.

Thus, health professionals must now be “symptomatic” to be tested. Similarly, fragile or at-risk individuals with “suggestive symptoms” of the virus have become “people with severe breathing difficulties or comorbidities”. If the criteria have not changed for hospitalized people, donors of organs, tissues or hematopoietic stem cells no longer appear on the list communicated by the government.