Hospitals in Paris are so overrun by coronavirus that medics are set to use high-speed trains for ‘mass emergency evacuations’ out of the city.
It comes as France struggles to prevent the spread of the disease, reporting almost 30,000 new cases on Saturday.
The number of people in intensive care units edged up by 37 to 4,070, as pressure intensified on hospitals.
Now a ‘first wave of mass evacuations’ out of Paris by high-speed train is set to start on Thursday, with 24 critical patients being placed on a TGV to less busy hospitals in other parts of France.
Frédéric Adnet, head of the emergency department at the Avicenne Hospital in north Paris, told Le Parisien: "It’s a logistical effort that is both extremely difficult and delicate to put in place.
"We are getting ready to start," Mr Adnet said, adding that patients had to be selected according to a "very strict" medical criteria.
"They must be patients in a serious but stable condition and who do not require therapeutic care during the transfer."
SNCF, France’s national rail operator, confirmed that some Paris patients had already been transferred by train, but the numbers were set to increase significantly.
The company needs up to three days-notice to refit a train, and is ready to prepare a number of trains by the end of this week.
François Braun, head of the country’s SAMU Urgent Medical Aid Service, said: "The ideal in the long-term would be to have a TGV dedicated to these operations."
France reported 29,759 new Covid cases on Saturday, up from 25,229 the previous day. The number of people to have died from the virus in hospitals rose by 169 to a total of 64,978.
France has the world’s sixth-highest total of cases, just behind Britain, but unlike the UK, its vaccination programme has been plagued by logistical bottlenecks.
The Health Ministry in Paris said 241,814 people received a first vaccination shot on Saturday, bringing the total to just over five million or 7.6 per cent of the population.
The figure for those who have already received two injections was 2.2 million – around a fifth of the British figure.
