It was March 16, 2020 when President Emmanuel Macron announced general confinement to halt the COVID-19 pandemic. Three years later, the World Health Organization says that Covid-19 will soon be comparable to the threat of the seasonal flu: “a threat to health, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that will not disrupt our society or our hospital.” systems”. But that cannot make us forget what the world and especially Guadeloupe have been going through in the last three years.
•
According to data from hospitals and Santé Publique France, 6,816 people had to be hospitalized for Covid in Guadeloupe in three years.
1,119 people died of Covid in hospital, a fatality rate of 16.4%. Figures that do not take into account deaths at home or in nursing homes.
Most of these deaths occurred at the height of the Covid epidemic, during the long holiday of 2021. The emergency department was saturated then; on August 18, 2021, 111 patients presented to the emergency room with suspected Covid. A recording.
This month of August 2021 was particularly dramatic, the deaths in this period were more than three times higher than those of August 2019.
Also see: The Covid-19 pandemic will soon become a problem similar to a seasonal flu, WHO says
In fact, according to INSEE Guadeloupe, the death rate increased by 78% between June 1 and September 20, 2021.
Today we are far from this health carnage, but the Covid is still there: last week 66 new cases were recorded in Guadeloupe and 11 hospitalizations are ongoing due to Covid, including three people in intensive care.