Is sorting patients in hospitals soon to be reality because of Covid? This is what many healthcare givers are thinking, standing at the ready for months as for the spread of the epidemic and treatment – as best – in intensive care. A feeling also expressed this Sunday March 28 on Franceinfo by infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido at Hôpital Raymond-Poincaré in Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, who also signed the opinion’s column issued in JDD about sorting patients out in hospitals in the event of saturation.
The infectious disease specialist explained this sorting out could arrive if nothing is done to stop the increase in contaminations and if need be, “younger people will be opted for, of course”, he said. Sorting patients out could become reality sooner than expected, the situation heading to it. “The main difference with this past March is that hospitals are now filled with Covid sick, as well as non-Covid patients. Today, hospital beds vacant can be counted on the fingers of one hand”, he adds. He goes on, “at some point, there will be an extremely difficult situation, where there will be life-threatening emergencies to handle, and there will be no bed in hospitalization units”.
Yet, this situation of sorting patients out can still be prevented, he thinks, even though he warns: “I think that anything that can be made to decrease contaminations today is necessary. We can clearly see that for politicians, some are working hard to open ICU beds as an emergency, especially in Ile-de-France. But we must understand, these beds cannot be extended indefinitely”. He takes Germany as an example that “showed with three times as many ICU beds, you cannot save more people and at some point, what must be done is curbing contaminations”. He concludes: “the severity and flow of patients arriving at the hospital today strangely look like what happened this past Spring”.
