A three -year -old boy in Drôme, a 17 -year -old teenager in Narbonne … Meningitis has killed several people in recent weeks in France. This disease is one of the meningococcal infections that, according to the Pasteur Institute, “a high mortality rate (10%) and a strong potential epidemic.”
The latest data provided to BFMTV shows an increase in invasive meningococcal infections in France in early 2025, compared to other years.
Invasive meningococcal infections are winter infections and, therefore, always have a beak in winter. But “this year, the peak is very important,” according to Professor Muhamed-Kheir Taha, head of the National Reference Center (CNR) of the Méningococci at the Institut Pasteur.
A particularly high number of cases in January
The month of January 2025 is the month with the largest number of cases with the month of January 2023, which has been a record in the last 15 years, he explains to BFMTV. The CNR identified 93 cases of meningococcal infections in January 2025, against around 67 cases in January 2024 and 93 cases in January 2025. From the beginning to the mid -February, the CNR listed around forty cases in France.
Every year, France records between 500 and 600 serious meningococcal infections.
Several factors can explain this resurgence in recent years. Professor Muhamed-Kheir Taha underlines the impact of pandemic on the deceleration, then recovery, of the circulation of meningococcal infections, including meningitis.
Immunity weakened by Covid
During the Covid period, thanks to the barriers, “this bacterium, like many bacteria with respiratory transmission, stopped circulating and, therefore, there is less port” that allows “generating immunity in the population,” explains Muhamed-Kheir Taha in BFMTV this Tuesday.
“We have become somewhat, during the two years of Covid, an immunologically naive. And when the bacteria circulated again at the end of 2022, (we had) an increase in cases,” he adds.
Another element plays in this number of high cases: the flu, which “promotes invasive infection of Meningococcus,” according to Muhamed-Kheir Taha. The viral infection such as the flu “alters the mucous membranes, which allows meningococcus to cross them and go to the blood, and thus leads to sepsis and meningitis,” said Professor Daniel Floret, specialized in infectious diseases and vaccination, with 20 Minutes in 2023. However, the flu epidemic was very virulent this winter in France.
Vaccination prevention
The Regional Health Agency (Ars) AUVERNE-RHône-Alpes remembers that “Vaccination is the best tool to protect yourself from infectious pathologies”, including invasive meningococcal infections. Since January 1, Vaccination against ACWY and B meningococcal is mandatory for babies.
Meningococcal meningitis is treated in antibiotics. Antibiotic treatment is also administered to people who have been in contact with an infected person. “It is a disease that progresses very quickly,” he warns about BFMTV Muhamed-Kheir Taha, the difficulty is that at first, the symptoms “are not very specific”, with fever or fatigue.
For babies, health insurance recommends calling 15 or 112 if the baby has unusual behavior (handling, incessant crying, irritability, abnormal drowsiness), if he refuses to eat, he has a gray complexion or gray complexion or gray complexion Maked gray complexion or seems not very reactive to stimulation. In adults, meningitis is also presented by the headache associated with intolerance in light or noise, rigid neck and neurological symptoms, such as drowsiness.
Source: BFM TV
