Key Points

In Week 37 (September 12–18, 2022), emergency department visits and hospitalizations following such visits increased among children (up 17% and 10%, respectively, or 12,568 visits and 753 hospitalizations, including 519 among children under 2 years of age) and remained stable among adults.

Visits for asthma attacks continue to rise among children (+42%, or 873 more visits) and among adults (+29%, or 262 more visits). There has also been an increase in visits for upper respiratory tract infections among children under 15 (+58%, or 4,114 more visits) and bronchiolitis among children under 2 years of age (+85%, or +345 visits), as well as, to a lesser extent, for isolated fever across all age groups except those aged 75 and older (+14%, or +565 visits) and pneumonia among those aged 75 and older (+8%, or +105 visits).

Furthermore, among those aged 2–14, most of the main conditions seen in emergency departments (notably trauma, malaise, abdominal pain, and headache/migraine) showed a moderate increase (in the range of +10 to 15%).

Finally, a slight increase in visits due to suicidal behavior was observed among those aged 45–64 (+15%, or +50 visits). Among adults, however, the observed level remains comparable to that of previous years.

Regarding COVID-19, after an initial week of increase among children aged 2–14 in Week 36, visits for suspected COVID-19 rose across all age groups in Week 37: 2,171 visits across all ages (vs. 1,837 in Week 36, a 18% increase), representing 0.67% of overall emergency department activity (vs. 0.59% in
Week 36) and 34% of hospitalizations following a visit (vs. 36% in Week 36).

Since monitoring began on February 24, 2020, 870,849 emergency department visits for suspected COVID-19 have been recorded.