Wearing a mask in the hospital is “a necessity“, insisted this Monday on franceinfo Francis Berenbaum, head of the rheumatology department at Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris, while wearing a mask in the hospital is no longer compulsory since Monday August 1. He is part of of the collective of patients, caregivers and scientists who plead, in a column published in L’Express, for the maintenance of the obligation to wear a mask in healthcare establishments.Public Assistance-Paris Hospitals (AP-HP) has chosen to maintain the mandatory mask.
franceinfo: Was the choice of the AP-HP to maintain the obligation to wear a mask necessary?
Francis Berenbaum: Of course, it was necessary, and even obvious to us who are on the ground. Hospitals are places where there are sick people, it’s obvious, and sick people are more at risk of catching Covid. The Covid can still cause serious forms. We talk a lot about benign forms but for people who have different pathologies, and in particular immunocompromised people who are found in hospitals, it is really a necessity.
The Ministry of Health still says that wearing a mask is still very strongly recommended. Would you have preferred a national obligation?
For hospitals, I think so. But I can’t imagine a hospital on the territory that won’t make it compulsory. In our hospitals, there are immunocompromised people, elderly people who can easily catch Covid and are at risk of still having serious forms. And then all the hospitals in the territory are understaffed. A nurse, a caregiver, a radio manipulator, whatever the trade, who catches the Covid, will no longer be in the hospital for a few days, but there are crying shortages of staff. The slightest person missing from a team can totally destabilize an entire department.
How are the caregivers at Saint-Antoine hospital doing?
We go as in the majority of public hospitals and in private services. The staff are tired, are really on a tightrope. The teams have no leeway if ever a staff is not there. As the staff is tired, it is a big risk. So we are tense, stressed. The staff has just lived through two years of an epidemic and, behind it, continues to experience enormous difficulties.
If you had one appeal to make to the government or to the citizens, what would it be?
We are gone for many more months to have this obligation. I have no advice for the government. They do what they can.
“But at my level, I say be careful: when you enter a hospital, protect others and you will also protect yourself by doing so”.
Francis Berenbaum, physician at APHP St-Antoinefranceinfo