2023-12-02 05:46:00
the essentials Less than a month before the holidays, should we be worried regarding the increase in Covid-19 cases? For infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido, the month of December generally rhymes with an epidemic resumption which this year might be multiple with the circulation of other infections such as mycoplasma.
While Public Health France is seeing an increase in Covid-19 cases, should we be worried regarding the holidays? How can you ensure you have a peaceful and healthy Christmas? For Benjamin Davido, infectious disease specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches, the last few weeks have not been marked by a blatant acceleration of the epidemic. “We have some hospitalizations but no surge in cases, and no hospitalizations in intensive care,” he notes. A situation due, according to him, to the late arrival of winter which might rhyme with a resumption of the epidemic in December, combined with the circulation of other respiratory diseases.
“We know when we look at recent years that this period from December to January corresponds to a resumption of contaminations,” explains the infectious disease specialist. It is therefore impossible for the curves to miraculously come back down for the holidays. Last year, the winter was marked by a triple epidemic of covid, flu and bronchiolitis which put hospitals under pressure. A scenario which might be repeated this year: “We have new epidemic phases with viruses RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), mycoplasma which is increasing worryingly and Covid which is making a small comeback.”
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Readjust barrier gestures and get tested
One month before the end-of-year holidays, and an inevitable “mixing of the population”, the trend is therefore towards caution. To avoid contamination, it is better to readopt old reflexes. “Barrier gestures have an advantage: they are universal. We have associated them with covid but they protect once morest other infectious agents,” explains Benjamin Davido. No need to go overboard and disrupt your holiday plans. “But let’s be vigilant, so as not to find ourselves bedridden on New Year’s Eve on the 31st because we will have been contaminated at Christmas.” A vigilance that, according to Benjamin Davido, everyone can anticipate from the beginning of December: “When we get on a crowded metro train, or when we enter a room with closed windows that is not ventilated, we put on the mask.”
Diagnosis is also important to benefit from the appropriate treatment depending on the infection. We therefore seek medical or even paramedical advice and we test ourselves for covid. “You have to test yourself at the right time. Doing it as soon as symptoms appear is of little use. You have to wait three days,” advises the epidemiologist. It is better to favor a test carried out by a “third party” rather than a self-test: “If you are in contact, the doctor can prescribe a PCR test. You can also carry out an antigen in a pharmacy, for covid but also for the flu . It’s always better to have certainty before the holidays.”
Vigilance on mycoplasma
Apart from Covid, it is mycoplasma that is worrying. An epidemic which, according to the infectious disease specialist, is nothing extraordinary since it generally appears “every 3-5 years”. A resurgence due to a “decline in immunity” within the population in a “post-pandemic” context which favors symptomatic forms. The infection which mainly affects young people and which can be treated with antibiotic treatment can transform into pneumonia in “10% of cases”. “We know that there are tensions over the supply of medicines. The real question is whether we will have sufficient treatments in France depending on the evolution of this epidemic,” judges the scientist.
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Worrying increase in respiratory diseases: an “unusual upsurge” in cases of Mycoplasma pneumoniae confirmed in France
The challenge is therefore to contain these diseases which circulate to an increased extent in winter, by re-appropriating barrier gestures at the first signs of epidemic resurgence. “Common sense” that can be applied beyond the holidays, until the end of January to start the year in the best conditions.
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