Évacuations sanitaires aériennes collectives du service de santé des Armées français – MoRPHEE et MEROPE – au profit de patients en syndrome de détresse respiratoire aigu lié à la COVID-19

After its emergence in China in late 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 (or COVID-19) outbreak quickly exposed care systems to critical care resource saturation in affected regions. Because of the heterogeneous distribution of the disease among different territories, the use of patient transfers from saturated regions to non-saturated regions became necessary. Collective aeromedical evacuation missions of SARS-CoV-2 related ARDS patients were performed by the French Air Force and French Military Health Service teams. Two systems were used: the MoRPHEE system on the Airbus A330 PHENIX and the MEROPE system on the Airbus A400 M ATLAS. 59 patients with SARS-CoV-2 related ARDS was transferred using these systems between March and November 2020.