Early outbreak raises fears of pressure on pediatric wards

The bronchiolitis epidemic started this year like last year early, and if it is impossible for the moment to predict its evolution, “we must expect an impact on the pediatric services”, warned Friday Public Health France (SPF) t, emphasizing the importance of barrier gestures to limit the circulation of the virus.

An epidemic of this respiratory disease which affects babies and can sometimes lead them to hospital, is now underway in four French regions and appears 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, from Public Health France, during a press briefing on Friday. For the rest, “we will remain very careful because of the circulation of Covid-19 and the potential competition” of the two viruses, she added.

“We feel that it is starting to climb”

On the ground, caregivers hold a similar discourse, in a persistent context of staff shortages at the hospital. “I would not say that we are cracking up for the moment, but we feel that it is starting to climb”, testified to AFP Noëlla Manquin, childcare nurse at the Parisian hospital Robert-Debré.

“We have children arriving and who are (in a state, editor’s note) much more serious than a week ago: we will keep them much longer in the emergency room”, she detailed. “They are getting smaller and smaller, too: it ranges from a few days to two or three months.”

Between delay and precocity

Normally, the bronchiolitis epidemic follows the same seasonal pattern from one year to the next: it starts between the end of October and mid-November, reaches a peak in December, ends at the end of January or even the end of February. But this temporality has been affected since Covid-19, in many countries.

The 2020-2021 epidemic was much later, with a start in mid-February 2021, and had a lesser impact than usual. Conversely, the 2021-2022 epidemic was earlier, in a context of the end of the confinements: it started at the beginning of October and had a greater impact on the whole season than usual.