Update as of April 19, 2021 Organ procurement and transplantation activity during the third epidemic wave of COVID-19 in France

The health crisis situation has persisted for over a year, and while a new wave of epidemics is underway, hospitals are managing to maintain "Covid negative" channels to ensure priority activities such as organ harvesting and transplants. The Agency is present to support the hospital organ procurement coordinators, whose investment in the current context we salute. It regularly exchanges information with transplant teams, as well as with learned societies and patient associations.

The Agence de la biomédecine, through its recommendations, and healthcare teams in the field, have been able to learn from the experience acquired during the first two waves, as well as from developments in knowledge about the virus. Activity figures for March 2021 show that the priority nature of organ transplantation and procurement is fully taken into account, and that teams are mobilizing to enable their patients to benefit from the transplants they need under optimum safety conditions.

In particular, at the start of 2021, living donor transplant activity reached higher levels than those observed in 2019 and 2020.

In addition, the Agence de la biomédecine is continuing its bimonthly meetings with the national monitoring committee, which brings together patient associations, representatives of transplant professionals, as well as representatives of the Ministry of Solidarity and Health and the Agence de la biomédecine. These meetings provide an opportunity to review the health situation and level 2/2 organ procurement and transplantation activity, as well as to answer questions and receive feedback from the field.

REIN epidemiological bulletin for France: As of April 12, the Agence de la biomédecine databases on patients suffering from chronic renal failure or having undergone a renal transplant recorded 9,346 patients infected with SARS-Cov-2: 2,377 renal transplant patients and 6,969 dialysis patients. This puts the incidence of SARS-Cov2 infection at around 6% of kidney transplant patients and 14% of dialysis patients nationwide. To date, 345 deaths among kidney transplant patients and 1,174 deaths among dialysis patients due to SARS-Cov2 have been reported to the Agence de la biomédecine.

These figures should be treated with caution. They are provided for information only and cannot be considered exhaustive or definitive.

Press contacts PRPA Elisa Ohneiser ; elisa.ohneiser@prpa.fr 06.80.28.66.72 Danielle Maloubier Agence de la biomédecine presse@biomedecine.fr