Plea for masks, gloves as anxious French health workers face virus

PARIS - Fearful health workers across France sounded an alarm Monday over a lack of protective gear as hospitals, with hundreds of coronavirus patients in critical care, braced for an onslaught of new cases.

With more than 5,000 people officially recorded as infected in the country and some 400 in serious condition, France is scrambling to slow the spread of COVID-19 by implementing travel restrictions, closing non-essential retail businesses and limiting people's movements.

But there are fears that hospitals could become overwhelmed.

"We feel like we are going to the front, a little like we are infantry," said a nurse from the Edouard-Herriot hospital in Lyon, requesting anonymity, who said there was a lack of screening for even the healthcare workers most likely to be exposed.

"We are told that we are heroes but we are firstly professionals and above all we want to be protected."

Mustapha Soussi, doctor in charge of emergencies at the hospital in La Mure in the Hautes-Alpes region, said one practitioner had threatened not to come into work.

"Staff are worried about the lack of masks, we fear possible infection because we are in the front line," he said.

Concerns over masks, hand sanitiser and gloves were particularly acute among community health providers. "We have zero equipment," said Kaouther ben Amor, a home nurse in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille and a mother of a little girl.

She and her colleagues provide in-home care to some 30 patients.

"I had to beg for masks at the pharmacy," she said, adding that she was able to buy only 10.

She shared them with a colleague who could not get any because the pharmacies are out of stock and now has to wear the same mask for her entire working day, from 5:30am to midday, and then 3pm to 8pm.

"We are afraid for our patients, for us," she told AFP. "We are crying out for help because we lack resources."

"But of course, we continue to treat our patients because it is crucial for them, we must take care of them!"

Luc Lavaud, a general practitioner in Saint-Georges-de-Mons in the central Puy-de-Dome region said he planned to provide masks and hand sanitiser for anyone arriving at his office with a cough.

But he said the plan would only work for so long.

"I have 50 masks left. And after that?"

Also on Monday, the country's National Order of Nurses called for emergency measures to provide protective equipment like masks, eye protectors and gloves to a wide range of health workers, including doctors, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, physiotherapists and midwives.

"Health professionals must not become vectors of contamination," it said in a statement.