PARIS (Reuters) – As head of the urgent cases team in the Mulhouse ambulance service, Marc Noizet has been at the eye of the coronavirus storm that swept through this eastern French city. In the past few days, he has noticed a change.
A sick patient is secured by firefighters ambulance crew members of the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS 67) during a rescue operation as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Strasbourg France, March 27, 2020. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
“Things are getting better,” he said of the region around Mulhouse, the epicentre of France’s deadliest outbreak. His crews are being called out to fewer coronavirus-related cases. “That allows the staff to rest a bit, to take a breath.”
Public health officials in the Grand-Est region, near France’s border with Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg, say it is premature to say the crisis is over, but they believe they have passed the peak of the epidemic.
The virus hit the region earlier and harder than anywhere else in France, in large part becau