Marseille: hospitals are preparing to transform pediatric services in the face of Covid-19

Level 5, the last level of hospital tension, was triggered Tuesday in hospitals in the Paca region where non-urgent interventions are deprogrammed. This was already the case in Marseille for example, where the four hospitals of the APHM (Assistance publique des Hôpitaux de Marseille) have intensive care services almost 100% occupied in the face of the influx of Covid-19 patients.

“We negotiate patient by patient”

Without being able to push the walls, even the pediatric services, rather spared by the epidemic, will have to welcome adults sick with Covid. An imminent situation, according to Jean-Luc Jouve, pediatric surgeon and president of the medical commission of the APHM. “We see it coming,” he explains.

“In pediatric resuscitation, we are practically full of children who have severe bronchiolitis. As long as adult resuscitation is full, we will do what we did in the first wave: we will transform part of the pediatric resuscitation, at least half, in adult resuscitation “, laments the surgeon who fears a” huge influx of patients “because of the Omicron variant. “We’re down to a bed. We negotiate patient by patient.”