After almost three years of epidemic, what weight does the Covid-19 represent for the hospital? While the respiratory viruses of the winter season put the establishments under tension, the Covid further complicates the difficult accounting of hospital beds, adding to the epidemics of influenza and bronchiolitis which overwhelm the services. However, a form of normalization of the disease has been observed for several months already. The “Covid units” bringing together patients affected by the virus, isolated from the rest of the hospital, seem a distant memory in many establishments. More and more, the Covid-19 settles in the daily life of caregivers.
“We are no longer at all in the same emotional dimension and infectious risk as in 2020underlines Marc Lambert, head of the general post-emergency medicine service at the Lille University Hospital (CHU). Our life has changed; we can say “thank you” to vaccination. » For the former head of the Covid unit set up during the first wave and distributed in the services since 2021 – as in many establishments –, “Covid must be integrated as a daily element in patient care”. “It is no longer logical to treat these patients separately, caregivers adapt and learn to manage this risk of infection”adds the doctor.
A month and a half after the start of the ninth wave of Covid-19, at the beginning of November, the number of contaminations seems to have reached a high plateau, with 62,000 cases recorded on December 12, which will perhaps confirm a peak in the next few years. days. The number of hospital admissions continues to increase, and already exceeds the levels of the seventh wave, in July, with 1,500 people hospitalized on average per day. High indicators, therefore, but which no longer worry caregivers in the same way.
The patient profile has changed
In most of the establishments surveyed, patients treated for Covid-19 represent around 10% of hospitalized patients, at about the same level or even below that of the flu or bronchiolitis. “These three viral pneumonias together represent half of admissions, with similar clinical pictures”, notes Nathan Peiffer-Smadja, infectious disease specialist at Bichat hospital in Paris. In addition, about 40% of patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in hospital were admitted for a different reason. The Covid may have worsened their condition, but it will not involve the same care.
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