PARIS: In the COVID-19 intensive care unit of the Antony Private Hospital south of Paris, no bed stays free for long and medics wonder when their workload will finally peak.
As one recovered elderly patient is being wheeled out of the ward, smiling weakly, boss Jean-Pierre Deyme is on the phone arranging the next arrival and calling out instructions to staff.
Louisa Pinto, a nurse of nearly 20 years’ experience, gestures to the vacated room where a cleaner is already at work, scrubbing down the mattress for the next arrival.
“The bed won’t even have time to cool down,” she says as the patient monitoring system beeps constantly in the background.
For now, everything is stable in the 20-odd beds around her where COVID-19 victims lie inanimate, in a silent battle with the virus.
Paris is going through a third wave of the pandemic which risks putting even more strain on saturated hospitals than the first wave in March and April last year.
“With what’s coming in April, it’s going to be very complicated,” says Pinto, a mother of three who hasn’t had a holiday since last summer and like other staff will be canceling a planned break this month.
Even with a new round of restrictions coming into force this week, Health Minister Olivier Veran predicts that infections in France will peak only in mid-April, while hospital admissions will continue climbing until the end of the month.
Alarming forecasts leaked to the French media from the Paris public hospital authority AP-HP last week showed anywhere from 2,800-4,400 people in intensive care in the Paris region by the end of April even with a strict lockdown.
In the first wave, the number peaked at 2,700.
The director of the Antony hospital, Denis Chandesris, says intensive care capacity has already been increased by drastically reducing all surgery except for critical cancer, cardiological and emergency cases.
Hospitals everywhere in the region have taken similar measures, re-deploying beds and creating new wards, but they are reaching their limits.
“The difficulty is not so much beds or material, it’s a question of finding medical and paramedical staff to be able to take in patients,” Chandesris explained.
Last Sunday, a group of emergency care directors in Paris warned in an open letter that the situation was so bad that medics would soon have to start “triage” – selecting patients for care based on their chances of survival.
This prospect horrifies staff – and President Emmanuel Macron has always promised to shield hospitals and avoid the sort of scenes witnessed in Italy last March when patients piled up in corridors.
In a televised speech to the nation on Wednesday night, he promised to increase intensive care capacity nation-wide from 7,665 beds currently to 10,000 – a jump of 30 percent.
“I want to thank medical students, retired people, the army health service and medical reserve volunteers. All of them will be mobilized in a larger way,” he announced.
Opposition politicians and some experts reacted with skepticism while an Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche weekly found only 35 percent of French people had confidence in their government “to deal effectively with the coronavirus.”
Pinto, the nurse, underlined how working in intensive care is “very technical,” requiring specialized training and knowledge.
Macron is banking on a limited lockdown over the next month turning the rising tide of cases which have roughly doubled to 40,000 a day compared with their level a month ago.
The sharp acceleration is down to the spread of the more contagious so-called British variant which has become dominant in France.
New measures include nation-wide travel restrictions, which limit people to 10 kilometers (six miles) from their homes, and the closure of schools and non-essential shops.
Only a significant increase in the vaccination campaign – which started sluggishly but is now picking up pace – fills any of the medics at Antony Private Hospital with any hope.
After months of lacking doses, the government is promising a major rollout this month and an increase in the rate of jabbing.
Samir Taik, a taxi driver from Paris, walked out of the Antony hospital last week as the 1,000th COVID-19 patient to have benefited from oxygen therapy in the COVID-19 intensive care unit.
The 43-year-old, who enjoys boxing and sport, is still short of breath and reeling from the trauma of seeing his health deteriorate so fast.
He says he knows three or four people with a similar profile to him who have been hospitalized recently.
“Young people need to know that we’re not talking about 80-year-olds, it’s people who are 30, 40, 45-year-olds and have no health problems. The British variant is not like the old one,” he said.
Paris medics fear worst of COVID-19 wave still to come
https://arab.news/v9seb
Paris medics fear worst of COVID-19 wave still to come
- Paris is going through a third wave of the pandemic which risks putting even more strain on saturated hospitals
- The sharp acceleration is down to the spread of the more contagious so-called British variant
Homeless Muslims in southern Philippines observe Ramadan as month of trial
- Thousands lost their homes when parts of Bongao in Tawi-Tawi were burnt to ashes
- Many trying to fully observe the fasting month say they are grateful to be alive
Manila: As Annalexis Abdulla Dabbang was looking forward to observing the month of Ramadan with her family, just days before it began they lost everything when an enormous fire tore through whole neighborhoods of their city in the southernmost province of the Philippines.
Bongao is the capital of Tawi-Tawi, an island province, forming part of the country’s Muslim minority heartland in the Bangsamoro region. The city experienced its worst fire in years in early February, when flames swept through the coastal community, leaving more than 5,000 people homeless.
“We were swimming for our lives. We had to swim to escape from the fire ... We swam in darkness, and (even) the sea was already hot because of the fire,” Dabbang, a 27-year-old teacher, told Arab News.
“Everything we owned was gone in just a few hours — our home, our memories, the things we worked hard for, everything turned to ashes.”
Trying to save their 2-year-old daughter and themselves, she and her husband left everything behind — as did hundreds of other families that together with them have since taken shelter at the Mindanao State University gymnasium — one of the evacuation centers.
Unable to secure a tent, Dabbang’s family has been sleeping on the bleachers, sharing a single mat as their bed. When Ramadan arrived a few days after they moved to the makeshift shelter, they welcomed it in a different, more solemn way. There is no family privacy for suhoor, no room or means to welcome guests for iftar.
“Ramadan feels different now. It’s painful but at the same time more real. When we lost our home, we began to understand what sacrifice really means. When you sleep in an evacuation center, you understand hunger, discomfort in a deeper way,” Dabbang said.
“We don’t prepare special dishes. We prepare our hearts.”
While she and thousands of others have lost everything they have ever owned, she has not lost her faith.
“Our dreams may have turned to ashes, but our prayers are still alive,” she said.
“This Ramadan my prayers are more emotional than ever. I pray for strength, not just for myself, but for my family and for every neighbor who also lost their family home. I pray for healing from the trauma of fire. I pray that Allah will replace what we lost with something better. I pray for the chance to rebuild not just our house, but our sense of security.”
Juraij Dayan Hussin, a volunteer helping the Bongao fire victims, observed that many of them were traumatized and the need to cleanse the heart and mind during Ramadan was what kept many of them going, because they are “thankful that even though they lost their property, they are still alive.”
But the religious observance related to the fasting month is not easy in a cramped shelter.
“It’s hard for Muslims to perform their prayers when they do not have their proper attire because they usually have specific clothes for prayer,” he said. “Sanitation in the area is also an issue ... when you fast and when you pray, cleanliness is essential.”
For Abdulkail Jani, who is staying at a basketball court with his brother and more than 70 other families, this Ramadan will be spent apart from their parents, whom they managed to move to relatives.
“The month of Ramadan this year is a month of trial ... there will be a huge change from how we observed Ramadan in the past, but we will adjust to it and try to comfort ourselves and our family. The most important thing is that we can perform the fasting,” he told Arab News.
“Despite our situation now, despite everything, as long as we’re alive, we will observe Ramadan. We’ll try to observe it well, without missing anything.”
