The incidence rate has almost doubled in one week in Haute-Vienne. He wakes up at 52 positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants. And this upsurge in the epidemic is already being felt at the Limoges university hospital: the number of beds occupied by Covid-19 patients has increased. _ “_A patient was hospitalized in medicine at the end of last week, this Wednesday there are 9, distributed in the departments of infectious diseases and respiratory pathologies “, indicates Sophie Girard, departmental director of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) in Haute-Vienne. In addition, four patients are hospitalized in intensive care.
“There is a thrill “ confirms Professor Jean-François Faucher, head of the infectious diseases department at the Limoges University Hospital. “We adapt. These beds which should receive non-Covid patients from our disciplines are available for Covid patients “. Sophie Girard specifies that no operation has been postponed “but the question will arise if we continue to have hospitalizations linked to Covid”.
Mainly unvaccinated patients
The majority of patients are aged over 60 years but there are some forties. “These are people who are not vaccinated at all for the most part or who have not had their booster dose. And they have risk factors for Covid, given their age or their comorbidity,” Professor Faucher notes. He fears that in the coming weeks, the hospital will be saturated by an even more massive influx of Covid-19 patients. The Regional Health Agency again identifies clusters, especially in companies. “If we weren’t afraid of it, we wouldn’t be insisting so much that people be vaccinated and recalled.”
The head of the infectious diseases department at the CHU de Limoges invites people at risk “to be screened in the slightest doubt” and if the result is positive, he invites them “to go quickly to their treating physicians to see if they can benefit from treatment to avoid the occurrence of complications.” Because since there is a treatment with monoclonal antibodies. “They are administered either to people who are starting their Covid, provided they present risk factors, or to people who have not been vaccinated. It is an additional chance for the patients”.
Almost 10% of those over 75 are not vaccinated
Sophie Girard, director of ARS in Haute-Vienne, explains that vaccination “is not very dynamic on the first injections (80%)” and underlines that “Nearly 10% of those over 75 are not vaccinated. So people who still have to be looked for because they are fragile people and who can be hospitalized”. On the other hand, it welcomes a “good momentum on recalls since 30% of the over 75s received their booster dose”, that is, a third dose for those who have not contracted the virus.