It’s official: the annual bronchiolitis epidemic for the 2025-2026 season has begun. Public Health France announced in its bulletin on Wednesday, October 29, that the Paris region was the first affected by this disease that especially affects babies.
During the week ending October 26, “syndromic indicators related to bronchiolitis increased in the city and in hospitals, to levels close to those of the previous season in the same period,” summarizes Public Health of France (SPF) in a weekly report on the main respiratory diseases of the autumn-winter.
Île-de-France has now entered the epidemic phase. As every year, the other continental regions should be affected in the more or less long term by the epidemic, starting with Normandy, which is currently in the “pre-epidemic” phase for the third consecutive week.
A disease that mainly affects children
According to the Health Insurance website, bronchiolitis is an acute respiratory viral infection that affects the bronchioles (small bronchi). It is mainly due to the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which is seasonal. The virus causes inflammation of these bronchioles and “an increase in secretions responsible for an obstruction phenomenon.”
As the Ministry of Health explains, adults and older children who are carriers of RSV often have no symptoms or simply have a cold. But the disease can be more serious in young children. The most common symptoms are: a stuffy or runny nose and a mild cough, which then becomes more frequent with breathing that may be wheezing. The child may have difficulty breathing, difficulty eating and sleeping, and have a fever.
In general, the symptoms disappear quickly and the child recovers in 8 to 10 days, but a residual cough can persist for about fifteen days before disappearing, according to Health Insurance.
Babies under two months old and very fragile children (born prematurely or suffering from a chronic illness) are especially vulnerable to the complications that bronchiolitis can cause. “In rare cases, bronchiolitis requires hospitalization or even admission to intensive care,” according to the Public Health France website. This public body dependent on the Ministry of Health specifies that “deaths attributable to acute bronchiolitis are very rare (less than 1%).”
Preventive treatments
To prevent it, as it is a very contagious disease, authorities recommend several hygiene measures for people around babies. These are: wash your hands periodically, avoid taking them to confined public places where they may be in contact with people with colds, do not share bottles, unwashed cutlery, pacifiers, ventilate the room for at least 10 minutes a day, clean their toys periodically, etc.
This disease requires consulting your doctor. However, there is no specific antivirus treatment. Furthermore, to protect children, the authorities recommend two preventive treatments, covered by Health Insurance, that are offered to pregnant women (Abrysvo) or babies (Beyfortus).
The latter is a medication that is administered only once in the form of an injection. “It protects newborns and infants a few days after the injection and for at least five months,” according to Health Insurance.
30% of babies are affected each year.
Every year in France, 30% of children under two years of age suffer from bronchiolitis, which represents around 480,000 cases per year, according to health authorities. Among babies under one year old, 2 to 3% are hospitalized each year for severe bronchiolitis.
Bronchiolitis remains the leading cause of hospitalization of babies under one year of age. However, the arrival of preventative treatments has helped change the situation in recent years.
For the 2024-2025 season in France, the bronchiolitis epidemic, from mid-November to mid-January, was “of shorter duration (8 weeks) and of lower intensity than previous epidemics, before the implementation of childhood immunization and maternal vaccination, especially in children under 3 months,” says the Ministry of Health.
Source: BFM TV
