Hospitals ‘told to go into crisis mode’ in France amid calls for new lockdown in country’s east

It comes as contagious new Covid-19 variants are spreading fast in some areas

Hospitals in France have reportedly been asked to go into crisis mode from next week (REUTERS)

Hospitals in France have reportedly been asked to enter “crisis” mode to prepare for a potential spike in cases, amid calls for a lockdown in the country’s east.

It comes as extra contagious new variants are spreading and rules are tightened in some areas as authorities move to curb infections.

In Dunkirk, where the new variant first detected in the UK is responsible for most recent virus cases, coronavirus patients have been transferred from the city’s saturated hospital.

Earlier this month, around 20 patients were transferred from a hospital in Le Mans in northwest France to nearby Nantes to ease pressure, according to French media.

The French health minister has now asked regional health agencies and hospitals to go into “crisis organisation” from next week, according to newspaper Le Journal Du Dimanche. 

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The move, which would echo measures taken in March and November last when France went into national lockdowns, involves increasing the number of hospital beds available, delaying non-urgent surgery and mobilising all medical staff resources.

"This crisis organisation must be implemented in each region, regardless of the level of hospital stress and must be operational from Thursday 18 Feb," health authority Direction générale de la Santé  (DGS) said in a memo cited by the newspaper.

The DGS was not immediately available for comment to Reuters.

Earlier this week, France’s national public health agency warned the spreading variants could worsen the country’s virus situation in the coming weeks after a period of stable infections and hospitalisations since the country lifted its stay-at-home order in December and replaced it with a night-time curfew.

Despite the spread of new Covid-19 variants, France has avoided imposing a fresh lockdown, instead sticking to a national curfew, which moved two hours earlier to 6pm to limit the spread of the virus in January.

But growing calls for a new lockdown have come from officials in eastern France.

The mayor of Metz, Francois Grosdidier told BFMTV he wanted a “true lockdown” that was “limited in its location and time, but “really slams on the breaks”. 

France‘s largest network of private medical labs found a jump in cases of the variant first identified in South Africa in three regions of eastern France. 

In the Moselle region, the variant was found in nearly one third of positive tests during the first week of February, Biogroup said.

Olivier Veran, the French health minister, visited the region on Friday and promised stepped-up testing and vaccinations, but the government has resisted calls from some local doctors and leaders for a new lockdown.

Meanwhile, local health authorities urged people in Dunkirk and some other nearby areas not to leave town and ordered tougher mask rules to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Neighbouring Germany has taken measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 in light of the new contagious variants, tightening border controls with the Czech Republic and Austria’s Tyrol province.

Only citizens and residents of Germany, truck drivers, transport and health service workers and others are allowed to cross over into the country under new rules that came into force on Sunday – as long as they have registered online and have a negative coronavirus test.

Additional reporting by Associated Press