Covid at Christmas: “Everyone must do a test the same day and respect the ventilation”, recommends Professor Pialoux – LCI

The public hospital under high tension during the holidays? In any case, this is the fear of Professor Gilles Pialoux, guest of LCI this Wednesday. To avoid too much pressure on the hospital system, the doctor calls on the French to “collective responsibility” during large family gatherings at the end of the year.

“Everyone must do a test on Christmas Day and respect the ventilation. We must not get together with the elderly or immunosuppressed”, he argues, believing that it is at this price that the“we will spend the holidays more or less correctly”.

Emmanuel Macron said this Wednesday on France Bleu Pays d’Auvergne, believe that “the French will be able to spend serene Christmas holidays”. “We are fighting together and the French have made considerable efforts by giving up a lot of leisure, by being extraordinarily civic. Me, I am optimistic for the future”, he said again. However, Professor Pialoux is not so categorical. “There is no decline, there is just a slowing down of the rise”, says the head of the infectious diseases department at Tenon hospital in Paris.

“We must stop being in blissful reassurance”, he hammers, arguing that‘”no argument suggests that it will go down”. “We, for Christmas and New Years at the public hospital, our concern is to have nurses in front of the beds”, he emphasizes. “We are not at all calm about that, even if the wave is partly controlled by vaccination. We have visibility at three days”, he explains. “We are extremely worried”, concludes the doctor.

Gilles Pialoux also warned about the gradual evolution of the profile of Covid-19 patients in hospital intensive care units. “In the field, we have the impression that the patient profile is a little different”, he says. “At first it was a caricature of unvaccinated. Now there are people who are away from vaccination. This means that they left five or six months after their second dose and did not receive their booster. . And of course, some patients have also escaped the vaccine because they are immune-compromised or transplanted. “, analyzes the infectious disease specialist.

Consequently, he recommends accelerating the recall campaign and especially“trying to recover the 6 million people eligible for vaccination who have not received any dose so far”.