Paris accused of making ‘health mistake’ after lockdown ruled out despite intensive care crisis

Paris hospitals have been told to cut 40 per cent of non-essential operations to free up beds for Covid patients

Credit: BENOIT TESSIER/Reuters

The French government’s decision not to impose a lockdown in Paris is a “health error”, according to the head of a unit of one of the French capital’s top hospitals.

The criticism came hours after Jérôme Salomon, head of French public health, said a blanket or weekend lockdown in Paris was currently “not on the cards”.

"Lockdown is a last resort measure that would be submitted to the government and the president if we were under the impression the hospital system could not cope," he told RTL.

When asked about the decision Gilbert Deray, head of the nephrology department of Paris’ la Pitié Salpêtrière hospital, said: “A health error has been made with the consequences that we can see.”

“Nobody has shown France that what we are currently doing is better on a psychological, economical and societal level than a six to eight-week lockdown,” he told BFMTV.

Weekend lockdowns have been imposed on the Riviera around Nice and the Channel area around Dunkirk. But President Emmanuel Macron has rejected experts’ advice to impose a new lockdown in the capital and other badly affected areas. 

Paris’ Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo and the Paris region’s president, Valérie Pécresse have also come out against a new lockdown, with Ms Hidalgo calling the idea “inhuman”. However, Ms Pécresse this week confessed that the area was “on a knife edge” and confinement could not be ruled out.

The comments came as hospitals in the Paris region were on Monday ordered to reduce non-Covid care and surgery by 40 per cent as intensive care occupancy due to new coronavirus cases was nearing saturation.

A lockdown in Paris is 'not on the cards' according to France's health chief despite rising infections

Credit: ALAIN JOCARD/AFP

With 1,050 intensive care beds assigned to Covid-19 patients, the region of 12 million people had filled nearly 980 of them by Monday. Cutting non-urgent treatment of other conditions would add about 570 more beds, said Aurélien Rousseau, director of the regional health authority.

“This is a very tense situation. We needed to react very fast,” said Mr Rousseau. He added that new cases were accelerating, with 35 people going into intensive care each day.

With around 25,000 new infections per day nationwide, there are more intensive care cases of Covid-19 than any time since November, when the government imposed a second, less draconian lockdown that lasted a month. More than 88,000 people have died.

Schools have remained open since last summer, as have workplaces and most shops. A national curfew from 6pm has been in force for three weeks.

The French government is seeking to ramp up its vaccination programme, which got off to a woefully slow start.

Only 3.9 million people have received at least one dose compared with 23 million first doses in Britain. Last week weekend, a mass vaccination drive saw 585,000 people receive jabs. 

The government hopes to boost the campaign when pharmacies start offering the vaccine from March 15, and the fire service and the army are to carry out more injections.

However, vaccine scepticism remains high with as many as 40 per cent of medical staff refusing or delaying jabs. There is particular resistance to the AstraZeneca jab.

On Tuesday, France’s national academy of medicine called for anti-Covid vaccination to be compulsory among health workers, saying “vaccine hesitation is ethically unacceptable among medical staff”, adding that they accounted for 34 per cent of infections in hospitals.