2024-02-27 18:11:19
A woman speaks to a pharmacy employee before receiving a dose of vaccine against Covid-19, in Ajaccio, October 5, 2023. PASCAL POCHARD-CASABIANCA/AFP
While seasonal waves of respiratory infections, such as influenza or bronchiolitis, are ending or should soon end, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) and Public Health France (SPF) reported on Tuesday 27 February, an autumn and a winter “serene” on the epidemic front. The Director General of Health, Grégory Emery, however recognized that, for caregivers, “situations where guards may have been difficult”.
Read the decryption | Article reserved for our subscribers In the emergency room, always under pressure, caregivers on deck… and “on the line”
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Concerning bronchiolitis, the epidemic lasted about as long as last season, with the same peak “early” late November-early December, according to Laëtitia Huiart, the scientific director of Public Health France. The peak in question was lower in 2023, with 2,300 hospitalizations of children under 2 years old the week of November 27 to December 3, compared to 2,900 for the corresponding week in 2022. Above all, a lower number of babies under 3 months had to be hospitalized for severe forms.
According to Ms. Huiart, “this strongly suggests the interest, for these age groups, of the Beyfortus administration”, the trade name for nirsevimab. Developed by Sanofi and AstraZeneca, this new monoclonal antibody against the respiratory syncytial virus, the main cause of bronchiolitis, has been used in maternity wards since mid-September 2023. According to clinical trials, it is capable of reduce by 83% the number of hospitalizations for bronchiolitis in children under 1 year old. After the very severe bronchiolitis epidemic in 2022-2023, which had saturated many critical care services, the treatment was awaited by pediatricians. Both the DGS and SPF, however, call for waiting for the results of studies still in progress to confirm its effectiveness in real use.
Very high demand
Christèle Gras-Le Guen, the head of the pediatric department of the Nantes University Hospital, who had been tasked by the government with supporting the prevention campaign against bronchiolitis, is delighted, in any case, to “the historical support of parents” to the new treatment. Nearly 85% of them would have chosen the injection of this antibody for their child. “It’s an extremely positive surprise in a somewhat “vaccine-skeptical” country,” according to her. In September 2023, the craze took the health authorities by surprise: while 200,000 doses had been ordered, the very strong demand for nirsevimab had forced the government to restrict it to maternity wards so that it could be administered to the most common infants. young people and therefore those most at risk, to the detriment of city pharmacies.
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