Pediatrics and emergency rooms of the main Italian hospitals in emergency due to the wave of influenza that hit the country .

The respiratory syncytial virus , responsible for bronchiolitis, is also heavily affecting children, especially those under 5 years of age .

A situation, underlines Rino Agostiniani, vice-president of the Italian Society of Paediatrics (Sip), which «in many situations has proven to be critical, with very high numbers of visits to emergency facilities and long waits ».

The data from the RespiVirNet report, the Integrated Surveillance System (epidemiological and virological) coordinated by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) with the support of the Ministry of Health, speak of an increase in cases of flu-like syndromes with 17.2 cases per thousand assisted (15.6 in the previous week), with an estimated number of cases among children and adults exceeding one million in the last week taken into consideration. The increase is due to various respiratory viruses and not just influenza, whose incidence is growing especially in pediatric age groups, while it is stable in adults and the elderly.

«There were the holidays, in which we have now lost all infection control mechanisms - underlines Agostiniani -. Many people find themselves together in closed environments and this facilitates greater transmission of viruses and a situation in which we are reaching epidemic peak, especially for influenza. Due to the organization we have today, many of these cases end up in hospital." Even «the syncytial virus is on the rise , especially in children under 5 years of age, and hospitalizations also occur precisely in this age group - specifies the vice-president Sip -. While during the pandemic period the peak trend had shifted a bit, this year the virus has returned to behave as in the past, starting towards the end of November, December, and the expectation is that it will last a little longer ', with high numbers in January, then decreasing. But in young children, the perception is that cases of flu still exceed those of bronchiolitis." «For bronchiolitis - adds Agostiniani - the . For the little ones, many complex situations are observed especially with second births, that is, with children perhaps one month old who have a little brother who goes to nursery school and who 'brings' the virus home."