French coronavirus surge raises harrowing specter of ICU overloads

PARIS >> When French President Emmanuel Macron holds his coronavirus strategy meeting this week, some of the figures at his disposal from overburdened hospitals will show why doctors are bracing for the possibility of unprecedented misery from rampaging infections.

Internal projections by the Paris public hospitals authority, some of which were seen by The Associated Press, suggest that intensive care units in the region of 12 million people may soon have to find space for more critically ill patients than ever. Nationwide, the number of ICU patients has already eclipsed the levels of France’s last deadly surge in autumn.

Increasingly, hospital indicators suggest that this new surge risks becoming the worst one yet, raising the pressure on Macron to reverse course and lock down the country once again, as he did in October and November.

At Bichat Hospital, one of Paris’ biggest, Dr. Aurelie Gouel’s job of finding space for surgeries in its rabbit-warren of operating rooms is getting harder. Her phone rings constantly with requests for increasingly squeezed resources. Half of the ORs have been shut down this week to free up staff and space for COVID-19 care, Gouel said.

“The hospital isn’t big enough to absorb the people who are sick,” she said Tuesday. “We’re under pressure to open extra beds but can’t do that with health care workers who are exhausted.”

Less-urgent procedures like hip replacements are being postponed. “Even if the patient is in pain, and I understand that being in pain is a real problem, they will have to wait,” Gouel said.

Outside the capital, ICU wards are also at the bursting point. Virus patients occupy all 16 regular ICU beds at the main hospital in Amiens, where Macron was born and schooled. Ten more temporary ICU beds set up this month in a pediatric wing for non-COVID-19 patients are mostly also full.

Dr. Michel Slama, the ICU deputy head, said Tuesday that at the current rate of admissions, and without stricter virus control measures, his hospital could soon be facing its worst battle with the virus to date.

“See that slope? See how sharp it is?” he said, pointing to a chart of virus infections and hospitalizations in northern France, including the Amiens region.

In the ICU, relatives circled in silence around the bed of a 60-year-old man close to death.

Less-urgent procedures like hip replacements are being postponed.