In the midst of the virus surge, Paris hospitals are beginning to see signs of optimism

PARIS (AP) – Dry cough as he pedals – the aftermath of his own war with COVID-19 A hack, hack, hack – The doctor spins through the darkness of pre-dawn Paris, hastening his crisis meeting Hospital that returned in February, now has more than a quarter of a million people in Europe Are dead.

In the nine months since then, the complex caretaker Philippe Montevers and the 150 doctors and nurses he leads at the Tall Pichat Hospital in Paris have become experts on their enemy. That knowledge proves invaluable against the second deadly outbreak of the virus, which threatens to sink again European health systems.

As his lungs are still congested, Montrovers describes the progress he and his team have made in their care since the last spring’s terrible early waves, and treatment advances to help Pichat and other hospitals better resist the renewed wave of infections. In February, Pichat became the first hospital outside Asia to record the death of a person infected with the virus: an 80-year-old tourist from China.

“In the first wave, people did not dare to come to the hospital. They were scared, they were scared of the epidemic, ”Montrovers recalled. “When they arrived, they were on their last legs, tired, unable to move, so – hop! – We ventilated them. ”

Now, there are steroid treatments that are not available to Pichat’s doctors in the first uprising. They learned not to put patients on ventilators if possible and to keep them awake and bathe in oxygen and dispense through masks instead of invasive tubes. Patients are also interested and seek help prior to their symptoms so that they are easier to treat.

Taken together, these and other improvements mean that patients often spend days in critical care instead of weeks and survive in greater numbers.

“We’ve won about 15 days in caring for them, and the death toll has dropped by half,” Montrovers says.

That image is reflected across the country. Although more patients are now hospitalized with the virus in France than at the April peak of the initial waves, there are about 2,000 fewer in intensive care. The situation is worse, a quarter of deaths in France are now linked to COVID-19, and the country is once again heavily locked up. But hospitals seem to have caught on, and the ability to sustain the highest point of the uprising is expected to spread across France in the coming days.

“This system is on the verge of cracking, but at the same time, there is little hope at the end of the tunnel,” Montrovers says.

At another major hospital in Paris, anesthesiologist Damien Wyland-Folk also begins to believe that they will see these waves of infection.

While the organization was battling corona virus cases in the spring, he was transferred from his special job of putting people to sleep for surgery, instead being thrown into battle in intensive care wards, including infiltrating patients with respiratory equipment.

But this time he was not drafted, the cases enabled him to continue to perform liver transplant surgery and cancer surgery for non-Govt-19 patients despite the snowfall.

“In September-October, my colleagues and I firmly believed we would go back to the ICUs,” he said. “But for now, no.”

Pichat was able to set aside more resources for life-saving disease-free treatments.

In March-April, the hospital, which specializes in heart and lung transplantation, stopped two-thirds of surgeries to free up space and staff for viral patients, among others, Montrovers said. This time, one-third of surgeries are postponed. Among those who went forward as teams battled the virus outbreak was last week’s lung transplant surgery and the week before.

The glowing towers of the Notre Dame Cathedral flutter against the lightning sky. There, he and other hospital administrators discuss how to separate their beds and staff. One of the questions he asks himself as he rides, what will be the next 48 hours? Should he change more operating rooms to divert additional resources to fight the virus?

“The situation at the hospital is complicated because we don’t know where we are going,” he says.

From personal experience, it is doubly known how the Montrovers virus can cause awful surprises. He and his wife work in a hospital, and were “completely devastated for two weeks” when they were afflicted with a fever, headache, pain and cough. He lost 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of muscle and now he is trying to get back on his bike.

But the good news for his morning ride was that the previous night had been quiet in his vital maintenance field; They took an extra corona virus patient, a 70-year-old woman, with difficulty breathing. In the event of any sudden avalanche in viral cases, there were still beds in an operating room. So far, they are not needed.

“This is not a huge wave, we could have expected,” he said. “Things are not as bad, not as bad as we expected a month ago.”

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