The ninth wave of Covid-19 begins to fall. On December 19, there were 50,602 new cases of Covid-19 in France, according to weekly data from Public Health France. A figure down 17% compared to the average for the week, and close to falling below the alert threshold set at 50,000 cases per day. The number of people present in critical care is nevertheless still increasing (+ 6%), a consequence of the peak of the wave which seems to have been reached around December 10.
The epidemic of bronchiolitis in children also seems to be starting to slow down, after a peak in early December, with a decline in cases of 25% in one week. But “the intensity of the epidemic is still close to the level reached during the peaks of previous years”, warns the government agency in its epidemiological point.
Despite these lulls, hospitals remain overwhelmed by hospitalizations linked to the triple viral epidemic of Covid-Bronchiolitis-Influenza, of unparalleled intensity in recent weeks. Pediatric wards are particularly under water with up to 80% of beds occupied by bronchiolitis cases, and sometimes have to refer children to other facilities for treatment.
In Ile-de-France, the director of the regional health agency (ARS) called this Friday, December 23 “solemnly” for the mobilization of liberal health professionals and private clinics to “relieve hospitals”, saturated by the triple winter epidemic. She mentioned calls to 15 “which have been exploding for ten days”, emergency visits “20 to 30% higher” than normal, and a volume of stretcher beds (for people awaiting hospitalization) “very high”.
“Our health system is particularly under strain at the moment, with the Samu who have an increase of 30 to 40% the number of calls”, said the Minister of Health François Braun this Thursday, during a night visit to the Paris Samu. But “everyone is mobilizing in a kind of sacred union which is remarkable”, has he greeted, predicting an “even more complicated situation next week”. “We have an extremely difficult course to pass,” he noted.
The early flu epidemic continued to bring patients to the health services, raging spectacularly throughout mainland France and in most of the overseas territories. Hospitalizations are on the rise, according to Public Health France. In one week they almost doubled, reaching the number of 1,506 people hospitalized the week of December 12, against 692 the previous week.
As winter has only just begun, the health agency therefore reiterated its call for vaccination. “As of December 19, only 14.3% of 60-79 year olds and 17.2% of those aged 80 and over had received a booster adapted to the Omicron variant. In this context and given the active circulation of several respiratory viruses, a reinforcement of vaccination against Covid-19 (in particular by a booster with a bivalent vaccine adapted to the initial strain and to Omicron) and against influenza in the people targeted remains necessary”, she insists. Faced with a hospital on the verge of collapse and exhausted by consecutive epidemics, François Braun promised Thursday that he would begin “from January the global reform of our health system, territory by territory”, at the end the work of the National Refoundation Council (CNR).
