RSV is spreading at unusually high levels, overwhelming children’s hospitals

CNN
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When Amber Sizemore and her family went out of state to celebrate her birthday last week, she had hoped her toddler daughter, Raegan, would try swimming. But the 15-month-old, normally energetic and adventurous, wasn’t herself on Saturday.

“She hated it, and she normally loves water,” Sizemore said.

By Sunday, when the family was heading back to Ohio, the little girl was “coughing like crazy.”

“She coughed so hard, she threw up,” Sizemore said. Raegan also stopped eating and developed a fever.

When Tylenol didn’t help, Sizemore took her to urgent care and told them that RSV or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cold-like virus, was going around at Raegan’s day care, where Sizemore also works.

The test came back positive, and Raegan’s vital signs prompted the staffers at the urgent care to tell Sizemore to take her daughter to the hospital.

As soon as they saw her vitals, the staff at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland knew they had to admit Raegan, her mom said. She needed oxygen.

“They’ve been great here and taken good care of her, but the scariest part is, had I not already known she was exposed to RSV, I may have just let her cough it out,” Sizemore said. “I’m glad I didn’t wait.”

There’s now an “unprecedented” rise in RSV cases among children in the US, some doctors tell CNN.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not track hospitalizations or deaths for RSV like it does for flu, but it said Thursday there has been a rise in RSV cases in many parts of the country.

Several children’s hospitals told CNN that they’ve been “overwhelmed” with patients at a time of the year when it’s unusual to have a surge of RSV patients.

And overall, pediatric hospital beds are more full now than they’ve been in the past two years, according to federal data.

The US Department of Health and Human Services does not specify the reason for hospitalization, but about three-quarters of pediatric hospital beds available nationwide are being used now. By comparison, pediatric hospital beds were about two-thirds full on an average day over the past two years.

With the RSV surge, UH Rainbow Babies has had so many patients, it went on diversion for a couple of days in early October, meaning it couldn’t take external emergency admissions. It’s taking patients again now, but it’s still slammed with RSV cases.

There has been such such a dramatic increase in cases in Connecticut that Connecticut Children’s Hospital has been coordinating with the governor and public health commissioner to determine whether it should bring the National Guard in to expand its capacity to care for these young patients.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been at Connecticut Children’s for 25 years, and I’ve never seen this level of surge specifically for RSV coming into our hospital,” Dr. Juan Salazar, the hospital’s executive vice president and physician in chief, told CNN.

In Texas, where RSV cases usually spike in December or January, the emergency department at Cook Children’s in Fort Worth and its urgent cares are seeing a significant number of RSV cases. Nearly half the ICU is filled with RSV cases, hospital spokesperson Kim Brown said; between October 2 and 8, there were 210 RSV cases at Cook Children’s; a week later, there were 288.

Jeff and Zoey Green’s 4-month-old, Lindy, was admitted to Cook on Sunday.

At the hospital, Lindy’s fever was so high at one point they said they used ice packs to cool her down.

“I don’t know how but she slept with those ice packs on top of her,” Zoey Green said, holding an exhausted Lindy at the hospital. She said they’re trying to keep her hydrated so she doesn’t have to go back on an IV.

“We want her to be better, for sure.”

Dr. Mallory Davis, an infection preventionist at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is also seeing an early surge.

“We are very full, and our census numbers are pretty high as we work through kind of figuring out how to accommodate all of the sick kiddos in the community,” she said.

Children’s Hospital Colorado has seen an early uptick in RSV hospitalizations and is starting to see the first few flu cases of the season, said Dr. Kevin Messacar, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“We have been seeing increased patient volumes since the late summer, which started with rhinoviruses and enteroviruses as children returned to school,…