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 common and highly contagious disease
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.
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 linked to the start of Covid: it started at the beginning of October and had a greater impact on the whole season than ordinary.