Since Friday, February 5, the island of Mayotte has been reconfigured for at least three weeks. All indicators are red. The incidence rate has jumped to nearly 800 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and the positivity rate is close to 25%. Hospitalizations are also on the rise. And young people are more and more affected by the epidemic.

About thirty military nurses and resuscitation equipment from the Ministry of the Armed Forces have just arrived on site to support the teams mobilized for several weeks. Dr Nora Oulehri, emergency doctor and crisis medical director at the Mayotte hospital center, answers our questions.

• What is the situation at the Mayotte hospital?

“The situation is worrying for this crisis with an exponential increase in the number of Covid cases. We have an intensive care unit which initially can accommodate 16 patients, which we have increased to 22 patients and which we will surely be obliged to increase even more. “

• What is the profile of the patients?

Me, who comes from the Grand Est and who lived the wave of the Grand Est, it was not as fast. The patients were not degraded so quickly. I don’t know if it’s due to the South African variant.

The patients are younger, more serious, they require more resources, critical care and the contagiousness is much more important than what we experienced during the first wave. The average age of those who are hospitalized in intensive care in Mayotte is around forty years.

• How do you manage to welcome the sick?

We called for help from the Reunion Island hospital with which we implemented a medical evacuation strategy to their CHUs with a constant flow of five medical patients and two Covid + intensive care patients who are transported every days. It gives us a breath of fresh air to be able to hospitalize the flows which continue to increase.