The scarves are still mostly in the closet, but here are already the first illnesses of autumn and winter.
This year, bronchiolitis is thus particularly early, already affecting almost the entire territory.
The last few days have shown a “continued increase in bronchiolitis surveillance indicators in children under 2 years old”, according to a weekly report from the French public health agency.
The Hauts-de-France, Ile-de-France, New Aquitaine and Occitanie regions have entered the epidemic stage.
And Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Brittany, Centre-Val de Loire, Grand-Est, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, Pays de la Loire and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur are considered in a preliminary phase .
A disrupted seasonal pattern since the Covid crisis
Common and highly contagious, bronchiolitis causes babies to cough and have difficult, rapid, wheezy breathing.
Even if it is distressing for young parents, it is most of the time benign.
But it may require a trip to the emergency room, or even hospitalization.
A total of 2,058 children under the age of two went to the emergency room for bronchiolitis in the week of October 3 to 9, a clear increase compared to the previous week.
Nearly 660 were eventually hospitalized.
The number of hospitalizations is thus higher than what is usually observed at the beginning of October, confirming the scenario of an earlier epidemic for the second year in a row.
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 the Covid, in many countries.
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