A team of travel risk management experts from International SOS have completed a complex evacuation and repatriation involving four ICU COVID-19 patients from La Réunion to Paris.

Commissioned by the French Ministry of Health and carried out in collaboration with SAMU, the Regional Health Agency, Air Austral and Aéroports de Paris, the unique operation involved 20 medical staff.

The chartered Air Austral Boeing 787 made the 11-hour flight from Réunion Island to Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport on 5th March, following a civil aviation exemption to allow the airline to embark so many patients on stretchers and with such a high volume of oxygen (40,000 litres).

Onboard, portable blood analysers, an ultrasound machine, two ECMO machines (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) and backup ventilators represented one ton of medical equipment.