The bronchiolitis epidemic began this year as early as last year, and if it is impossible for the time being to predict its evolution, “we must expect an impact on pediatric services,” Public Health France (SPF) warned on Friday.
An epidemic of this respiratory illness that affects babies and can sometimes land them in hospital is now underway in four French regions and looms on the horizon in ten others, health authorities said on Wednesday.
“What we are currently seeing is clearly an increase in epidemiological indicators, an increase in hospitalizations,” said Sophie Vaux, of Public Health France, during a press conference on Friday. Otherwise, “we will continue to be very careful about the circulation of Covid-19 and the potential competition” of the two viruses, she added.
However, we must “expect an impact on pediatric services”, he said, emphasizing the importance of barrier gestures to limit the circulation of the virus.
Children in “much more serious condition than a week ago”
On the ground, caregivers maintain a similar narrative, in a persistent context of hospital staffing shortages. “I would not say that we are collapsing at the moment, but we feel that it is starting to rise,” Noëlla Manquin, a childcare nurse at the Robert-Debré hospital in Paris, testified to AFP.
“We have children who arrive and who are (in a state, editor’s note) much more serious than a week ago: we are going to have them much longer in the emergency room,” he explained. “They are also getting smaller and smaller: It varies from a few days to two or three months.”
Normally, the bronchiolitis epidemic follows the same seasonal pattern from year to year: it starts between the end of October and mid-November, peaks in December, ends in late January or even late February. But this temporality has been affected since Covid-19, in many countries.
The 2020-2021 epidemic was much later, starting in mid-February 2021, and had less of an impact than usual. In contrast, the 2021-2022 epidemic was earlier, in a context of the end of confinements: it began in early October and had a greater impact throughout the season than usual.
Source: BFM TV
