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PARIS (AFP) – France’s government said on Sunday (March 14) that it plans to evacuate about 100 Covid-19 patients from intensive care units in the Paris region this week as hospitals struggle to keep up with an increase in cases.
With the transfers, officials hope to avoid a new lockdown for the roughly 12 million people in and around the capital as they rush to step up a vaccination campaign that got off to a slow start.
“By the end of this week, probably around 100 patients will have been evacuated from the Ile-de-France region,” which encompasses Paris, said government spokesman Gabriel Attal at Orly airport, where two patients, aged 33 and 70 years old, they were flown to the southwestern city of Bordeaux.
Later this week, two specially equipped trains will transport “several dozen patients to regions that are less affected today” by the pandemic, Attal added.
When asked if Paris would avoid a new blockade, Attal said that “we are doing everything possible not to have to take more difficult and restrictive measures.” However, “we will always make the decisions that are necessary.”
The government has already ordered weekend closures for the northern region of Pas-de-Calais, where transfers of Covid-19 patients to less crowded hospitals began earlier this month, and in the Mediterranean region surrounding Nice.
Of the nearly 4,100 Covid-19 patients currently in intensive care across the country, around 1,100 are in Paris-area hospitals.
The 6 p.m. curfew remains in effect throughout France, and restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theaters, and large shopping centers have been closed, but the average daily number of new Covid-19 cases has continued to rise steadily across the last weeks.
On Saturday, France’s public health agency reported nearly 30,000 new cases over the previous 24 hours and 174 deaths, bringing the total death toll in France to 90,315.
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