The director general of Public Assistance – Hospitals of Paris anticipates, in an interview with “Echoes”, a disorganization of the health system of the capital during the coming weeks.
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It’s a warning about the Omicron threat in the coming weeks: “It will rock” in January in hospitals under the effect of the shortage of caregivers affected by Covid-19 and the epidemic outbreak, Martin Hirsch warned Thursday, December 30. The Director General of Public Assistance – Paris Hospitals (AP-HP) spoke in an interview with Echoes on the dangerousness of this new variant.
As the Delta variant continues “to lead to many admissions”, the Omicron wave, a more contagious strain according to the WHO, is gaining momentum. If the shapes are rather “light”, “We are seeing that it is already hitting a large number of caregivers, (…) the rate of absenteeism is increasing sharply, with sick leaves which are on the increase and no full team”, Martin Hirsch alert.
The comparison with England, where the epidemic is a few days ahead of France, is striking: “With Omicron, 25% of their caregivers had been arrested. It has nothing to do with the first wave anymore.”, marked by absenteeism around 11%, he underlines.
It is “a bit as if Omicron threatened to withdraw 1,000 to 1,500 nurses from our establishments – knowing that there are already so many shortages”, he sums up, speaking of “15 crucial days”. This will lead to additional deprogramming, “in surgery as in medicine, except vital indications and transplants”. A ministerial directive already provides, to avoid the shortage, that caregivers “positive but asymptomatic“continue to work.