“We are not in the same situation as last year”, but “we are vigilant”, reassures the general director of the AP-HP

“We are not in the same situation as last year”reassured Nicolas Revel, general director of the AP-HP, Thursday, November 9 on France Inter, while bronchiolitis, which affects the respiratory tract of newborns, is in an epidemic phase in ten regions, including recently Hauts-de -France, Burgundy-Franche-Comté, New Aquitaine and Occitanie.

“We are not in the same situation as last year which was a very special year. We had to transfer around fifty young patients outside of Île-de-France”, he recalled. But “we are vigilant”he emphasizes. “When we had around 40 to 50 children hospitalized in our hospitals in a row per day, today we have around twenty”he indicates.

France has not yet used up its 200,000 doses of the drug Beyfortus

Since mid-September, all newborns have been able to benefit from Beyfortus, a drug aimed at protecting them against the main virus causing the respiratory disease. Nicolas Revel was pleased that France had been “one of the four countries in the world” having “made the choice to buy Beyfortus” and administer it. “80% of parents who had a child born in our maternity wards agreed to have Beyfortus administered to their little ones”he indicated.

Even if today no study measures the impact of the drug on the disease, its “conviction” and his “intuition”, “it’s that Beyfortus plays a role” on controlling the epidemic. France has not yet exhausted the 200,000 doses purchased. But “if we run out at the end of December, we will have somewhere passed the worst of the wave”he specifies.