End-of-year windfall for toilet paper manufacturers: one million French with gastroenteritis.
According to the latest statistics, 1,160.000 French visited their doctor in the past five weeks with gastroenteritis problems. Acute diarrhea attacked 369 in 100,000 inhabitants, which makes it an official epidemic (the threshold lies at 274/100,000). The worst (s)hit area was Nord-Pas-de-Calais, where 1,610 in 100,000 French spent more time au toilet than they catered for.
The good news is that the epidemic is slowly receding, and the use of loo paper should return to normal in the first half of January.
