“The number of patients with a severe form of Covid-19 is no longer increasing in Ile-de-France“, explained on Friday January 14 on franceinfo Professor Bruno Mégarbane, head of the intensive care unit at Lariboisière hospital in Paris. “We are starting to reach the peak in intensive care”, he adds, explaining that “The number of patients returning is lower than the number of patients leaving.” However, according to him, “it is still too early to relax the constraints and barrier gestures.”
franceinfo: Is the situation reassuring at the hospital?
Bruno Megarbane: Like all doctors and caregivers in Ile-de-France, I received an email from the president of the AP-HP this Friday morning. This email is very optimistic, or at least reassuring, telling us that everything is going well at the hospital at the moment. This is what we have already noticed for a few days in our services. In the department in which I work, the number of patients with a severe form of Covid-19 is no longer increasing, we remain stable. Today, we have 12 patients in intensive care. There are eight who are there for extremely serious forms of Covid-19 linked to the Delta variant. We have four other patients who are infected with the Omicron variant but who are there for other reasons, which have nothing to do with Covid-19. It was not the virus that brought them to intensive care. However, they are counted in the figures of people present in intensive care for Covid-19. Obviously, all of this leads us to believe that the Omicron variant is much less severe than the Delta variant. We are even starting to reach the peak in intensive care because, in fact, Delta contaminations are now on the decline.
So can we say that we have reached the peak?
It’s hard to say if you take into account the whole country, because the Delta variant continues to circulate in certain regions. On the other hand, in Ile-de-France, yes, we now have a negative balance, that is to say that the number of patients returning is lower than that of patients leaving. However, there are always people entering intensive care with serious forms of illness, contaminated by the Delta variant. This is why it is still necessary to be extremely careful at the individual level, especially when one is not vaccinated. The vast majority of patients who come to intensive care for severe forms of the disease are not vaccinated, or if they are, they are people with comorbidities or immunosuppression.
Can we begin to relax the constraints?
I think it’s still a bit early. The epidemic is still progressing, although it is progressing at a slower rate than last week. We are not yet at the peak of contamination. Rather, it will be within at least seven days, in my opinion. Thereafter, obviously, things will regress, we hope very quickly. The chains of contamination will fade, provided, of course, that these barrier measures are maintained until the end. Because otherwise, obviously, we are re-establishing new chains of contamination, especially towards the most fragile people, and it would be a real shame when things are improving.