Three Covid patients were transferred on Saturday from hospitals in the central Ile-de-France region (including Paris and its suburbs) to other regions of France in order to relieve the intensive care wards which are currently receiving Covid patients every 12 minutes, according to Le Parisien newspaper.
They were flown by helicopter to hospitals in the west of France, according to the health authorities (ARS), while three other patients will also be transferred on Sunday to clinics in the southwest Nouvelle-Aquitaine area and the central Pays de la Loire.
There are more than 5,500 patients hospitalised with Covid in the Ile-de-France region, 1,100 of them in intensive care units.
Razor edge
Earlier in the week, the prime minister Jean Castex and the health minister Olivier Véran insisted that hospitals deprogramme 40 percent of their non-urgent operations to make room for the ever-increasing Covid patients. On Saturday that figure had reached only 23 percent.
"We are walking on a razor's edge," admitted French prime minister Jean Castex, in an interview with Le Monde daily newspaper. "The situation is very worrying," he said, adding that "we must be ready at any time to take further measures if necessary."
However, the PM has excluded the idea of another strict lockdown in Paris for now, to the puzzlement of some doctors and experts. For now, he is banking on the logistics of the transfer programme and the curfew 6pm-6am which remains in place nationwide.
The government is also banking on the possibility to organise other medical transfers by train, operated by the SNCF company, as was carried out in the peak of the first wave of the virus in March and April 2020.
200 patients were transported by train from the Paris area to other regions at that time.
Vaccine delays
On Saturday morning, during a visit to a vaccination centre in the central Deux-Sèvres region, Castex was asked to react to the fresh announcement from the AstraZeneca lab that further delays could be expected for their vaccines on an EU level.
"We have targeted 10 million vaccinations by 15 April and I'm hopeful we'll stick to this deadline. But we must be careful as some labs have been causing problems in terms of delivery, so we will need to adapt."
AstraZeneca, for its part says production has been outsourced to labs outside the EU, meaning that the restrictions concerning exportation caused delays in the first quarter, which will necessarily cause delays in the second quarter.
On an EU level, Austria and several other nations requested a meeting to discuss the quotas for vaccines ordered at a bloc level. They are unhappy with the system in place, saying that their countries' needs haven't been carefully considered and the rollout is too slow.
Restrictions for elderly eased
In other developments, the minister for autonomy, Brigitte Bourgignon announced on Friday that restrictions would be less severe for residents of Ephads, or elderly care homes.
As of Saturday, they would be able to leave their apartments and visit relatives, if they had received the double jab of the vaccine.
"They will not need to test themselves nor self-isolate if they've had two doses of the vaccine," she said, adding that those not yet vaccinated could go out but would need to self isolate for seven days upon their return.
This in a bid to end the feeling of isolation encountered by many residents and their families.
France has now reached a death toll of 90,146 people, an increase of over 200 in the past 24 hours.
24,749 patients are currently hospitalised nationwide, over 4,000 in intensive care.
