Countries around the world scramble to contain coronavirus outbreak
COVID-19 cases rise across the world; Greg Palkot reports.
Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
France has turned a high-speed train into an intensive care unit to evacuate those infected with the coronavirus from overwhelmed hospitals in the outbreak’s epicenter.
The TGV train began transporting about 20 COVID-19 patients from Strasbourg, the capital city of the hard-hit Grand Est region, to less-strained hospitals in the Pays-de-la-Loire and other regions Thursday morning.
The government is calling the innovation a “first in Europe.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE
In each of the medicalized train’s five cars, an anesthesiologist-resuscitator, an intern, a nurse anesthetist and three nurses tend to the sick.
A patient is transferred in a high-speed train turned into an intensive care unit in Strasbourg on Thursday. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias)
The restaurant car, converted to a medical operations center, has stretchers attached to seats, the Telegraph reported.
"We need to enable our health system to treat in the best conditions the greatest number of patients," said health minister Olivier Véran.
The coronavirus has claimed the lives of 1,331 in France – almost half died in the hospitals of the Grand Est region. The number of sick climbed to 25,604 on Thursday.
'BORED' MAN IN FRANCE FINED AFTER PILOTING PLANE DURING CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN
President Emmanuel Macron already had ordered a field hospital built to help treat the increasing number of sick in the northeastern border city Mulhouse.
Macron wears a face mask during his visit at the military field hospital in Mulhouse on Wednesday. (Mathieu Cugnot/Pool via AP)
France plans to deploy helicopters in overseas territories to transport the sick; it already has used military planes and an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean to evacuate the infected.
The increased need for military forces to help fight the outbreak at home led France to suspend its anti-terrorism training operations in Iraq and pull out its Iraq-based troops involved in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
France will still maintain military operations in Kuwait and Qatar, and air force missions over Syria, the chief of staff of the French armed forces said in a statement Wednesday night.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Fox News' "Antisemitism Exposed" newsletter brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world.