Summary

In Week 2 (January 11–17, 2021), the second week after the start of the school year, emergency department visits continued to rise among children (+9%, or 4,831 visits, compared to +24% in Week 1) and remained stable among adults, while hospitalizations following visits increased only among 2- to 14-year-olds (+5%, or 171 hospitalizations, compared to +15% in Week 1).

After one week of stabilization, visits for suspected COVID-19 across all age groups are once again up by 9.5%. This increase mainly concerns adults (+10%, or +526 visits). Among children, despite a slight increase (+5%), the numbers observed in Week 2 are nearly identical to those in Week 1 (100 vs. 95 visits). Suspected COVID-19 remains the third most common diagnosis among those aged 75 and older and the seventh most common among those aged 15–74. In total, 6,119 visits were recorded in Week 02 (vs. 5,588 visits in Week 01—consolidated data as of January 19, 2021). The share of visits for COVID-19 in total activity rose very slightly to 2.6% (vs. 2.4% in Week 01), and the proportion of hospitalizations following a visit across all age groups remained stable at 58%. At the regional level, visits for suspected COVID-19 are up in 9 metropolitan regions: PACA (+19%, or +152 visits), Occitanie (+37%, or +126 visits), Hauts-de-France (+20%, or +63 visits), Nouvelle-Aquitaine (+14%, or +57 visits), Centre-Val-de-Loire (+32%, or +53 visits), Île-de-France (+6%, or +52 visits), Brittany (+42%, or +51 visits), Pays-de-la-Loire (+17%, or +39 visits), and Corsica (+167%, or +15 visits). Increases were also observed in Réunion (+243%) and Mayotte (+48%), but with low numbers (17 and 7 visits, respectively). Since monitoring began on February 24, 2020, 333,363 emergency room visits for suspected COVID-19 have been recorded.

Seasonal illnesses are on the rise among children: primarily ENT conditions (+29%), isolated fever (+12%), gastroenteritis (+17%), as well as vomiting alone among 2- to 14-year-olds (+19%). A sharp increase in visits for asthma is observed among children (+100%, or +145 visits among children under 2; +83%, or +247 visits among 2- to 14-year-olds).