Faced with the accelerated circulation of viruses, doctors are calling for schools to close a week before the Christmas holidays.
Parents of young children will have seen it for themselves in recent weeks: absenteeism is particularly strong in schools in France. One of the consequences of the multiplication of epidemics of Covid, influenza and bronchiolitis.
In the daily columns The Telegram, the head of pediatrics at the Rennes University Hospital, Véronique Despert, is crying out for alarm at the influx of sick children into her department, which has been saturated for many weeks. And for her, only the radical solution of closing schools quickly, a week before the Christmas school holidays, would stop the spread of these diseases.
“I think we have to think about closing schools now,” she said. “Children catch the virus at school and pass it on to their little brother or sister. We also have to stop family gatherings. From a scientific point of view, there is no other way” , justifies the doctor.
Particularly early and virulent, the bronchiolitis epidemic has been sweeping the country for many weeks and has reached record levels in infants for more than ten years.
The triple epidemic of Covid, influenza and bronchiolitis poses the risk of saturation of hospital services while the first two diseases have not yet reached their epidemic peak.