MARSEILLE – Nurses wheeled a 16-year-old boy suffering shortness of breath into one of the few available intensive care rooms at southern France's biggest hospital — its youngest COVID patient to date.
Nearby, medics checked the blood sugar levels of an older, unresponsive virus patient, speaking to him in soothing tones as a recording of Quranic verses brought in by his family played softly in the background.
This is daily life in La Timone's ICU ward in Marseille, as France grapples with whether to impose a third lockdown and struggles to ramp up the pace of vaccinations.
While the country holds its breath to see if a daily 12-hour curfew and other restrictions are enough to keep a new crisis at bay, all eyes are on hospitals like La