If you live with an elderly person, coughing and spluttering or other unusual sounds coming from their bedroom are worrying. But so is silence because … well, you know.
No sound from Mum’s room when I woke up this morning. I restrained the urge to check on her and was reassured within half an hour by the sounds of a sortie to the toilet. I think a scattering of lemongrass oil has calmed her cough. Please don’t tell me there are side effects.
A coward dies a thousand deaths and a worrier suffers a thousand crises but at least our anxiety spurs us to take action against its sources.
The death toll from this “unprecedented, severe, murderous” epidemic in France has now passed 3,000, as it has in the US. The description of the plague is from France’s health boss Jérôme Salomon, who reported that yesterday saw the highest rise in the number of deaths so far – 418.
It should peak in Ile de France at the end of the week, Stéphane Gaudry, a professor in medicine in Bobigny, north of Paris, told Le Monde. To date 954 people have died and 7,700 have been hospitalized in the Paris region, he says.
The national peak should have been reached on Saturday, according to earlier forecasts, but that has not happened. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, backed up by some experts, now predicts the peak at the end of this weekbut not everybody is that optimistic.
Macron is visiting a mask manufacturer today. The company has taken on extra labour and appealed to other firms to “lend” laid-off workers to help boost production. There are four mask manufacturers in France and they expect to raise weekly production from 15 million to 40 million. Millions are also being imported from China.
A lot of people seem to have masks, despite the fact that their distribution is supposed to be limited to frontline workers at the moment. Did they have them already? Did they get in early and buy up stocks? I was happy to find I already had one but I’ve used it now.
Which brings us to the read-this-and-weep moment.
In 2015 France had stocks of 285 million FFP2 masks and 20 million packs of 50 surgical masks – as many as current Health Minister Olivier Véran says we need today – plus 2,100 respirators and oxygen bottles and 11,000 sets of protective clothing and accessories.
In 2007, in the wake of the bird flu outbreak, a special unit was set up to prepare for future epidemics.
There was a right-wing government at the time and some Socialists accused it of enriching the manufacturers at the taxpayers’ expense.
And, of course, there was the continuous pressure to reduce health spending and balance the budget.
The unit’s budget was slashed from 281 million euros in 2007 to 25.8 million in 2015. It was merged with other government departments and the stocks run down, leaving no FFP2 masks at all and 120 million surgical masks when the Covid-19 emergency erupted.
France’s Covid-19 recorded death toll now stands at 3,024. There are 45,170 confirmed cases, 21,000 being treated in hospital, 5,100 of them in intensive care.
