In clinics and emergency rooms around DFW, sniffles and coughs are on the rise as the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) season ramps up.
“It starts off often with kind of cold symptoms, runny nose, maybe a low-grade fever,” said pediatric pulmonologist Dr. Preeti Sharma with Children’s Health.
The hospital system reported cases of RSV rose more than 130% between Oct. 1 and Oct. 22.
“Unlike last year, where things were sort of in the wrong seasonal times, this is about the time we see it, and generally it starts off with a quick spike because cases spread so rapidly and then kind of it remains to be seen what happens over the remainder of the season,” said Sharma.
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Cook Children’s also reported increases across its clinics and hospital, saying 25% of RSV tests came back positive in Fort Worth last week among more than 760 patients.
The DFW Hospital Council reported hospitalizations have remained mainly flat.
Still, Sharma said clinicians are keeping a close eye on flu and covid cases.
Her advice to parents is that prevention is key, including an RSV antibody injection recently approved for babies under eight months.
“Right now, that's being prioritized for babies who are at the highest risk, so those are infants under the age of six months, infants who have other underlying medical problems or who were born prematurely. And that's really just related to kind of a supply issue currently. But we are hopeful that as that becomes more widespread in use over the subsequent RSV seasons, that we'll see a decrease in cases or a decrease in severity,” said Sharma.
On the heels of a season that overwhelmed pediatric ERs, she said it remains how much of an impact the virus will have this year.
