It is progressing at high speed, this epidemic which parents are passing through in fear: bronchiolitis has passed the epidemic threshold in eight new regions, bringing to twelve out of thirteen the areas hard hit by this respiratory infection of the small bronchi.
Due to a very widespread and very contagious respiratory virus, it affects 30% of children under 2 years of age each year, some of whom must be hospitalized.
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Brittany, Centre-Val de Loire, Grand Est, Guyana, Normandy and Pays de la Loire have thus joined Île-de-France , Hauts-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie among the regions reaching the epidemic threshold.
Mayotte has moved to the pre-epidemic stage.
Only the Paca region still holds, as well as Corsica where the warning signs have not been exceeded.
According to Public Health France, visits to the emergency room increased by 46% in one week, and hospitalizations by 50%.
Since the end of August, there has been a continuous increase in ailments observed by doctors in their offices and in pediatric emergencies.
Mostly benign
Among the 2,959 children under the age of 2 seen in the emergency room for bronchiolitis last week, 973 were hospitalized, or 33%.
93% of these children were under 1 year old.
This sudden and continuous increase weighs on a hospital already in crisis, and the lack of beds and caregivers can be dramatically felt.
Common and highly contagious, bronchiolitis causes babies to cough and have difficult, rapid, wheezy breathing.
Even if it is distressing for young parents, it is most of the time benign.
But it may require a visit to the emergency room, or even hospitalization.
Normally, the bronchiolitis epidemic follows the same seasonal pattern from one year to the next: it starts between the end of October and mid-November, reaches a peak in December, ends at the end of January or even the end of February.
But this temporality has been affected since the Covid, in many countries.
The 2020-2021 epidemic was much later, with a start in mid-February 2021, and had a lesser impact than usual.