COVID Peak: Hospital Strain This Christmas

There is still time to get vaccinated, health authorities remind.

Fever is coming under the tree. The flu epidemic in France is expected to increase the use of healthcare during the Christmas holidays with “a strong impact” potential at the hospital, and its peak will occur at the turn of the year, according to new projections published Wednesday December 17 by Pasteur and Public Health France.

The first version of this modeling “anticipates an increase in emergency room visits for flu-like illness in the next two weeks, followed by a decrease” the first two weeks of 2026, in particular under the delayed effect of a drop in transmission linked to the closure of schools during the holidays, summarized the two institutions.

“The performance of the model may be variable”, noted at a press conference Juliette Paireau, who works on mathematical modeling of infectious diseases at Pasteur and SpF: “for seasons that resemble the past, the model is the most efficient; for very different seasons, the model will have more difficulty anticipating the dynamics”.

The peak of the flu epidemic is, at this stage, expected to be around Christmas week, with “15% chance that the peak will occur in week 51, 70% in week 52 and 12% in week 1. More “great uncertainty” persists “on the magnitude of the peak”specified Juliette Paireau.

Given the forecasts and “despite the high degree of uncertainty inherent in the modeling of influenza activity, it is likely that the use of care for influenza will increase significantly over the next two weeks in all French regions, with a strong impact to be anticipated in hospitals during the end-of-year holiday period”warned Pasteur and SpF.

As the holidays approach, conducive to gatherings, there is still time to get vaccinated and barrier gestures (masks, etc.) remain recommended, insist the authorities,