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Health. Winter is setting in, not the flu virus

While the world has its eyes riveted on the Covid-19, the winter flu epidemic has still not given any sign of life in France. In its last bulletin issued on January 13, Public Health France specifies that since October 5 and the implementation of the monitoring system, no serious case of influenza has been reported by the services participating in the surveillance. Only 11 influenza viruses have been detected in mainland France (10 in hospitals and 1 by the Sentinelles network which reports cases to general medicine and pediatric consultations), at least 2 of which in people returning from a trip abroad. .

“The impact of influenza still seems to be significantly reduced compared to previous years, thanks to the adoption of barrier gestures” summarizes the health organization in charge of monitoring the epidemic.

A 2019/2020 season blurred by the Covid

Last year at the same time, almost all regions of France, including Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, were already in a so-called “pre-epidemic” situation and 95 serious cases of influenza in intensive care had been identified nationwide. And a week later the epidemic phase had started. The final report will show nearly 60,000 emergency room visits including 6,000 hospitalizations, 860 serious cases admitted to intensive care and 3,700 deaths attributable to influenza during these 9 weeks of the epidemic. Surveillance was however interrupted due to the exceptional health situation linked to the appearance of Covid-19 and the results therefore cover an incomplete period.

An epidemic can start late

Can the situation of dead calm that prevails at the start of 2021 on the flu front still change? “Even if the strict application of barrier gestures seems the best factor to explain the absence of an influenza epidemic, we must always be careful when it comes to viruses and it is still too early to say that the epidemic will not have take place this year. We have already had years when the epidemic started in mid-January for example, ”indicates Doctor Marianne Sarazin, head of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes / Bourgogne-Franche-Comté branch of the Sentinels network. “In general we scrutinize what happens in the southern hemisphere during the southern winter to assess what can await us and it is true that there have been no significant influenza episodes this year”.

No epidemic but vaccinations

If the epidemic is currently conspicuous by its absence, the vaccination campaign was launched this fall with unusual vigor. More than a third of vulnerable people had already been vaccinated against influenza at the end of October against 19% at the same time last year, according to figures provided last month by Public Health France.

In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the vaccination coverage rate among the population at risk (all ages combined) amounted to 47.3% last year, against 47.8 at the national level.

Final verdict in a few weeks

The coming weeks will indicate more categorically whether the winter of 2020-2021 will be marked by the absence of an influenza epidemic. The current trend in the health sector (general curfew at 6 p.m., closure of restaurants and bars maintained for at least several weeks, continuation of teleworking …) seems in any case to be able to direct the trend in this direction.

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