Much later than in other years, the epidemic of bronchiolitis, a respiratory disease that affects young children, settled in the territory at the end of winter, with 1,400 emergency room visits and 550 hospitalizations last week, according to reports. figures released Wednesday.
Usually, the outbreak of bronchiolitis occurs in early winter, from November or December.
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The epidemic was underway in six regions of metropolitan France between March 1 and 7, against four the previous week, and five regions are in the pre-epidemic phase, according to the weekly bulletin of the public health agency France.
The epidemic less virulent this year
The "surveillance indicators" however fell compared to the last week of February, with a 21% drop in emergency room visits, to 1,413 children under two years old, and a 10% drop in hospitalizations, to 551. The overwhelming majority (about 9 out of 10) of these little patients were under one year old.
Bronchiolitis is a common respiratory disease, most commonly caused by respiratory syncytial virus, which affects 30% of babies under 2 years of age each winter.
Hospital indicators are usually much higher than this year, with around 6,000 emergency room visits and 2,000 hospitalizations during the peak of the epidemic in winter 2018-2019, and around 5,000 and 1,800 respectively for 2019-2020.
That winter, the saturation of pediatric emergency and resuscitation services in Île-de-France even required transfers of children to the provinces.
Public Health France does not explicitly make the link between the (this year's) more moderate and later epidemic and the application of barrier measures due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
"In the current context of the circulation of Sars-CoV-2 in France, the surveillance of infant bronchiolitis for the winter season 2020-21" will make it possible to "monitor the impact of the barrier measures currently in force on the transmission of the virus respiratory syncytial, the main cause of bronchiolitis in infants "and" to study the possible contribution of Sars-CoV-2 to the incidence of this pathology ", she underlines however.
On the other hand, seasonal flu side, there is still "no circulation of influenza viruses identified", underlines the health agency.
