Talk about awesomeness. France worked out a plan to turn one of its high-speed trains into a transport vehicle to deliver coronavirus patients from overburdened hospitals in the east to the facilities with more capacity in the west.
The journey takes about five hours, and each train car accommodates four patients. Each vehicle is also equipped with medical staff and supplies like ventilators.
How’s that for ingenuity? C’est Magnifique. Vive la France. Excellent solution, and I hope other countries will adopt this method into their emergency preparedness plan.
The patients were transferred from the hard-hit eastern region of France, where hospitals are operating at overcapacity, to the western Loire Valley, where facilities still have plenty of beds.
TV news reports on Thursday showed the patients being carried on stretchers onto one of France’s high-speed TGV trains, where their beds are strapped to platforms positioned across the tops of passenger seats.
Each rail car can accommodate four patients, is equipped like an emergency room — including ventilators and oxygen — and attended by six medical staff.
“The eastern region is now at the peak of the wave,” Dr. Lionel Lamhaut, who is in charge of the operation with the French rail operator SNCF, told France 2 television. “Every region will experience this in the coming weeks, but at different times. The idea is to take advantage of the lag times between regions and to transfer patients from the hard-hit to lesser-hit areas.” [NPR]
As of Friday night, France had close to 33,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases and almost 2,000 deaths.
This piece was written by Wayne Dupree on March 28, 2020. It originally appeared in WayneDupree.com and is used by permission.
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