KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Health leaders at East Tennessee Children's Hospital are seeing a rise in RSV and flu cases. They said they are worried about the timing — it's early to see a spike in cases.
"It used to be that RSV, in this part of the world, was a late fall through the winter into the early spring kind of disease," said Doctor Lori Patterson, a pediatric specialist at East Tennessee Children's Hospital.
Dr. Patterson said RSV cases are on the rise, and over 100 cases were reported within the last week.
"We had almost 120 cases. Now, that doesn't mean they were all hospitalized, but still, a lot of them were and so it's keeping the hospital very busy right now," said Dr. Patterson.
RSV, otherwise known as Respiratory Syncytial Virus, is a virus that infects the respiratory tract and is mostly found in babies and young children. A runny nose and a lot of congestion are signs that Dr. Patterson believes parents should look out for.
RSV is also not the only virus spreading rapidly.
"We are starting to see flu as well. We would see a few cases here in there over the summer. But similar to RSV, our numbers have been going up faster than we'd expected," said Patterson.
Dr. Patterson says during the COVID-19 pandemic when more people wore masks and were socially distanced, flu and RSV cases declined.
"Which is wonderful. But then what happened is that means that those children were not developing immunity. Instead of having a year's worth of susceptible kids getting RSV, we've got two or even three years' worth of susceptible kids," she said.