Marseille hospitals under high voltage in the face of the 5th wave of Covid-19 and the Omicron variant. Their intensive care units are overcrowded. AP-HM hospitals welcome nearly 70 Covid patients in critical care. In Bouches-du-Rhône and Var, the occupancy rates of intensive care units exceed 100%, with a large majority of unvaccinated patients. “The Covid patients we treat are not vaccinated in almost 90% of cases”, underlined 500 doctors of the AP-HM in a forum on Monday.
Three out of five heart operations canceled
At the Timone hospital, the cardiology department is in turmoil: 60% of surgical operations are deprogrammed. The nursing staff are transferred to the intensive care units. “We have to cancel the operations, because all heart operated patients have to go into intensive care after the operation and the places are already occupied by Covid patients”, explains Frédéric Collart, the head of the cardiology service. “The longer you wait, the more the heart can suffer and tire.”
Jean-Marie Forel, head of intensive care at the North hospital in Marseille explained, Monday, on France Bleu Provence: “On see a lot of people in our intensive care units who are unvaccinated, and who develop serious forms at younger and younger ages (…) they are 30, 40 or 50 years old.“He specified that all the places in intensive care in the PACA region are now occupied by people who have contracted the virus : “We are saturated with Covid hospitalizations.“
A call to get vaccinated
An unvaccinated person can also take the place of a vaccinated person in intensive care, because “services are not scalable” and “many other patients have had their operations unscheduledThese doctors, like Dr. Forel, are very clear: “Everyone is treated the same, whether they are vaccinated or not.” They denounce a dramatic situation : “Unfortunately we have started to operate in older subjects, the choice that they will not be able to benefit from the most complete care possible.“.
In the column published Monday, caregivers regretted that Marseille and its region are “among the least vaccinated in France”. As a call to awareness, they asked the unvaccinated to reconsider their position: “When you are sick, when your children, your parents need us, you know how to find us, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. In turn, we are counting on you. “