CNN
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A rise in respiratory illnesses among children is beginning to put pressure on hospitals.
In particular, hospitals are seeing an increase in cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a common cold virus that can be associated with severe illness in young children and older adults. Cases are rising in several regions of the US, with some already approaching seasonal peaks, according to the latest real-time surveillance data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Surveillance data collected by the CDC clearly shows an increase in RSV cases across the country in recent weeks, with cases detected by PCR testing more than tripling in the past two months and approaching peaks from last year. The CDC’s surveillance program captures data from 75 counties that represent about 9% of the total US population.
“RSV admissions have skyrocketed at Connecticut Children’s. October has been like never before for this virus,” Monica M. Buchanan, senior director of strategic and business communications at Connecticut Children’s Hospital, told CNN.
Buchanan said hospital leaders have met with the Connecticut Department of Public Health and the National Guard to begin the logistical review of placing a mobile field hospital on the front lawn and more work is planned Thursday to determine a final decision. and get approval.
Dr. Juan Salazar, executive vice president and chief physician at Connecticut Children’s, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan that beds are full and children are arriving at the hospital at an “unprecedented” level: more than 100 with respiratory syncytial virus overcome. . the past 10 days, including many requiring intensive care and oxygen therapy.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve been at Connecticut Children’s for 25 years and I’ve never seen this level of increase, specifically RSV, at our hospital,” he said.
Salazar said the hospital has not yet expanded into a field store, “but we have to be prepared in case the numbers continue to increase. So if RSV gets any bigger and hits us with the flu at the end of this…we will need additional capacity for our hospital.”
The increase in cases is also coming sooner than doctors would normally expect.
“We used to have a kind of seasonality for different viruses,” Dr. Thomas Murray, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and associate professor at Yale University School of Medicine, told CNN affiliate WFSB. “Like now, in December the respiratory syncytial virus or RSV would come, it would go away followed by influenza, it would go away and another one. What seemed to happen with covid is that now they all circulate at the same time.
In most of the United States, RSV typically circulates during the fall, winter, and spring, but the timing and severity of RSV season in a given community can vary from year to year.
In 2021, RSV peaked during the summer, so this year’s fall and winter surge marks a return to circulation patterns seen in pre-pandemic years, according to a statement from the spokeswoman for RSV. CDC, Kristen Nordlund.
This change comes as other respiratory viruses, the coronavirus that causes covid-19, rhinoviruses, enteroviruses, and the flu, also raise more concern.
Salazar said the United States is emerging from the era of Covid, when children were relatively unexposed to viruses, and now it is affecting them.
“I think for the next four to eight weeks, we just have to be careful,” Salazar said, adding that getting a flu shot now could help curb the spike in flu cases months later.
“Get your kids vaccinated against the flu,” he said. “This is the time you need to do it.”
The CDC recommends that everyone older than 6 months get a flu shot.
An early increase in seasonal flu activity has been reported in most of the United States, with the southeastern and south-central areas of the country reporting the highest levels of flu, according to the CDC.
“Here we are in mid-October, not mid-November, we’re already seeing scattered flu cases, even hospitalized flu cases, across the country,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Vanderbilt Division of Infectious Diseases. . University Medical Center and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, he told CNN.
Source: news.google.com