As bronchiolitis continues to spread to all regions, the flu epidemic is beginning to threaten mainland France, starting with the South West,
announced the health authorities on Wednesday.
For the third week in a row, the number of influenza cases, such as hospitalizations, has increased in metropolitan France, bringing the Occitanie region into the pre-epidemic phase, summarizes the French Public Health Agency in its bulletin.
The French less immune
It is the first metropolitan region to pass in this category, Réunion being already in this case and Mayotte fully hit by the epidemic. Last winter, confinements and anti-Covid barrier gestures helped block all viruses, including influenza. The French have been less infected than usual and are therefore less immunized collectively, which raises fears of a stronger epidemic this year, as well as for other diseases such as gastroenteritis.
This phenomenon has already been at work for weeks with bronchiolitis, a disease that mainly strikes babies. Common and highly contagious, it causes coughing and difficult, rapid, wheezing and wheezing. Most of the time benign, it may however require a visit to the emergency room, or even hospitalization.
Increase in gastroenteritis
Since November, the bronchiolitis epidemic has hit all regions of the metropolitan area, where it is currently continuing “at a high level”. Reunion and Guadeloupe are now added. In mainland France, last week, “among the 5,577 children under the age of 2 seen in the emergency room for bronchiolitis (…), 5,077 (91%) were under one year old and 2,015 (36%) were hospitalized”, details the agency.
Of these, “1,893 (94%) were under one year old,” she says. Finally, gastroenteritis side, cases are on the rise in metropolitan France but lower than their usual level at this time of year, according to the Sentinels network which reports data from many general practitioners.