SARS-CoV2 aka COVID-19: Situation in France
MD Franklin K in France writes:
As everybody on earth, we’re confined. For instance, last Sunday I drove 650 kms to go to my work town. I saw 4 cars… on a highway !! and very few trucks, maybe a dozen. It was incredible to drive alone on this highway, accompanied by snow - evident isn’t it ?
We just have 2 COVID-19 patients, but we’re not authorized to test them !! In France we don’t have any test and the Health Minister - a physician - proclaims it is not necessary. No swab, no biochemical material to perform the tests. The government concludes: no testing required. State lie. Make the word vanishing and the concept will die; exactly as in Orwell’s 1984 book. I’m living in a banana republic!!
For the first time in years, I'm angry:
- no face shield. While the Academy of medicine recommends the generalized use of masks... my department we have 58 high protection masks, which have to be changed every 2 hours. No deliveries for a month. Similarly, Macron makes a speech saying that "France has ordered a billion masks from China", whereas it should have been done a month ago.
- there are no more surblouses in France. The government is very proud to announce that 20,000 have been ordered in Turkey. 20000 !! We use 65 of them a day in my nephrology and dialysis unit alone.
- there is no more hydroalcoholic gel in pharmacies.
- we are beginning to run out of curare, which is used to prevent the movement of intubated and ventilated patients.
- Also, we're running out of sedatives.
- We're starting this morning to say that we may be running out of oxygen.I'm disgusted. I knew the hospital was sick for 25 years, but not that sick.
I'm angry, very angry.
DIGLLOYD: this does not bode well for France.
Health care professionals have been heroes in this pandemic, but I don’t hold any of them by an conceivable moral standard to treat patients without protective gear. Were I a patient myself, I’d say “go home”—my problem should not require you to endanger your life on my behalf in such a dangerous way. I’ll take my chances rather than ask someone to take on my risk in an unreasonable way.
