Covid-19: up to 3,000 calls per day to the Bouches-du-Rhône SAMU

At the Bouches-du-Rhône SAMU, the calls are numerous, and on the other end of the line, concern is felt. In large part, they come from patients with Covid-19. Doctor Paolo Serra, liberal regulating doctor, advises a patient to check her oxygen saturation herself. Up to 3,000 calls are handled per day, 1,000 more than normal. Since the Christmas holidays, the center has been overheated.

“There is the conjunction of seasonal pathologies, plus the Covid. We hope very quickly that we are on the set and that it goes down again”, comments André Puget, the director of SAMU 13. Despite referral from the SAMU to city medicine, 70 patients with Covid-19 arrive every day in the emergency rooms of Marseille hospitals, twice as many as two weeks ago. That of the Timone are almost full. “With the new variant, around 10% of our nursing staff are permanently contaminated and therefore absent from work”, also points out Professor Antoine Roch, head of emergencies at theAPHM.