In France, the second coronavirus wave has started in Fall. In hospitals, the occupancy rate in ICU keeps on growing and makes people fear a saturation point. A perspective making the medical staff fear a nightmare-like situation similar to the first wave.
What can we retain from the first episode of the coronavirus epidemic in France? A French study released in Intensive Care Medicine studies the issue. An investigation has been carried out on 4,244 people hospitalized in ICU between February 25 and May 4, 2020 and that developed a severe form of Covid-19.
This study underlines that even though mortality is not always higher than for other severe respiratory syndromes, the issue is for Covid patients the necessary lengthy hospitalization to recover, which is longer – up to 48 days for 25% of the cases studies. This data complicates the managing of beds in intensive care units.
Nevertheless, the study also observes the decrease of the mortality during the first wave: between February 25 and May 4, 2020 the mortality rate moved from 42% to 25%. The authors give credit to the improvement to the likely improvement in managing and the fact that at the beginning of the health crisis, the virus was pretty much unknown.
Since then, some uncertainties have been clarified enabling to use non-invasive ventilation technics for instance. Administering low doses of corticoids is also said to have been effective and enabled to rise patients’ survival chances as they were at 30% under artificial breathing support.
