Critical care doctors in Paris say surging coronavirus infections could soon overwhelm their ability to care for the sick in the French capital’s hospitals, possibly forcing them to choose which patients to treat.
The sobering warning of “catastrophic medicine” was delivered Sunday in a newspaper opinion piece signed by 41 Paris-region doctors. Published by Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, it comes as President Emmanuel Macron has been vigorously defending his decision not to completely lockdown France again as he did last year.
Since January, Macron’s government has instead imposed a nationwide overnight curfew and followed that with a grab-bag of other restrictions.
But with infections soaring and hospitals increasingly running short of intensive care beds, doctors have been stepping up pressure for a full lockdown.
The Paris-region doctors who wrote in Le Journal du Dimanche said: “We have never known such a situation, even during the worst (terror) attacks” that targeted the French capital.
The doctors predicted that softer new restrictions imposed this month on Paris and other regions won’t quickly bring the resurgent epidemic under control.
