COVID Christmas in French ICU: Fear, fatigue and loving care

By DANIEL COLE
Associated Press

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — The staff is tired, the omicron variant is bearing down and the intensive care unit beds are filling fast at a hospital in the French city of Marseille. The unit’s chief doctor is trying to keep his team members motivated as they spend another Christmas tending to patients on breathing machines. They decorated a fir tree in the corridor and seized a moment in between rounds for a communal Christmas Eve meal. Marseille’s La Timone Hospital has weathered wave after wave of COVID-19 and allows families to visit gravely ill loved ones in the ICU. One patient spending the holidays there said he deeply regrets not getting vaccinated against the coronavirus.