Faced with the massive influx of patients suffering from respiratory viruses, several hospitals have decided to strengthen their teams.
A health situation that continues to deteriorate. At the start of 2025, winter viruses, particularly respiratory viruses, are putting the country's hospital services under great strain.
According to the latest bulletin from Public Health France (SPF), published on Thursday January 2, the flu epidemic has strengthened and now affects all departments in France.
“The epidemic is at its peak and I think that we have not yet reached the peak. Above all, it is an epidemic which greatly affects elderly and pathological patients who are found every year on stretchers for hours in the emergency room”, analysis for BFMTV Professor Louis Soulat, vice-president of the Samu-Ergences union in France.
Staff mobilized
In fact, at least 19 establishments have in recent hours been forced to trigger their white plan in order to strengthen their teams in the face of the influx of new patients and to put in place additional resources. This was for example the case on Monday January 6 at the Nantes University Hospital, at the Lons-le-Saunier hospital in Jura and in several establishments in Vaucluse.
This white plan was also triggered jointly by the hospital centers of Toulon and Hyères, in the Var, two overwhelmed establishments.
At the end of last week in Toulon, 250 emergency room admissions were recorded, compared to the usual 150, and a third of the patients in intensive care there suffered from the flu. In addition, last weekend, the local Samu had to manage 2,000 calls daily.
“There are a lot of staff who come back for overtime and we also use temporary work. We monitor the situation in the daily crisis unit to be able to adapt the organization at any time,” Yann Le Bras told BFMTV, general director of the Toulon–La Seyne-sur-Mer Intercommunal Hospital Center.
Lack of beds and low vaccination
In Nantes, the situation is also chaotic at the city's university hospital, where operations had to be canceled in order to care for new patients. At BFMTV, Jérémy Beurel, FO assistant secretary at Nantes University Hospital, highlights the policy pursued for the hospital for years.
“We can talk about the flu epidemic, but above all we can also talk about the fact that for years we have had fewer and fewer beds in hospitals, fewer and fewer staff, so as soon as we have a peak in affluence. We are no longer able to absorb it properly unlike a few years ago,” he says.
Another fact that is of concern is the relatively low vaccination rate against the flu among French people most at risk. At the end of November, the health authorities had relaunched the call for vaccination against this diseaseworrying about a decline in practice.
The number of doses of vaccines delivered against influenza had in fact fallen by 5%, with 8 million then recorded compared to 8.4 million in the same period of 2023, according to the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France which mentioned to AFP a “bad start to the vaccination campaign”.
Caroline Dieudonné, Jasmine Bousquet, Mathis Menu with Hugo Septier
