Respiratory illnesses hitting children and adults early this season

TULSA, Okla. — The flu season has hit the United States early this year, and there’s also an increase in the number of Covid and RSV cases nationwide.

Doctors right here in Green Country are concerned, and want the public to do what they can to keep respiratory illnesses from spreading.

Tuesday afternoon, FOX23 had a chance to talk with the Saint Francis Health System’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Reetu Singh and the Medical Director of the Children’s Hospital at Saint Francis, Dr. Travis Campbell on Zoom call.

On the pediatric side, Dr. Campbell said this season’s RSV has hit earlier than most RSV seasons have, and its hit with a higher acuity.

He said RSV saw a huge increase in test positive cases as well as increased acuity requiring hospitalizations about a month ago.

Dr. Campbell addressed where we’re at right now, and what the future may hold:

“We have stabilized on the numbers, that doesn’t mean we’ve gone down, we’ve sort of plateaued,” he said. “That plateau is still at an extreme amount that’s putting pressure on our bed systems, it’s putting pressure on getting kids admitted when they need to be admitted.”

He added, this is not just a Tulsa situation. It’s a nationwide situation where RSV has hit in such high volume and high acuity that it’s really pressured the in-patient capacity for pediatric admissions.

He said flu, influenza A in particular, is on the rise right now. Covid has kind of increased/stabilized for the pediatric population.

We asked him what parents can do to try and keep their children healthy:

“Good hand hygiene and good respiratory hygiene can do a tremendous advantage to protecting the small children from getting admitted with RSV because of exposure,” Campbell said. “There’s still high acuity with high admission rates with high needs that is on the horizon for RSV.”

Dr. Campbell said the best way to keep young children out of the hospital with RSV is by taking steps to decrease exposure.

If your child has RSV, he said, parents need to learn suction techniques to avoid hospitalization for those under one year of age.

He said pediatric influenza is on the increase, and it’s a very intense strand.

According to the health officials at Saint Francis, it’s important to get the flu shot to avoid serious illness or hospitalization.

Singh was asked about the spread of flu among adults.

“On the adult side we are definitely seeing a peak in flu, influenza A. With the way we were all isolated,” she explained. “We have not really built a lot of immunity, so there is definitely an early peak with flu, we’re seeing a lot more hospitalization and test positives in general.”

Singh said Covid numbers are beginning to rise again as well:

“We have seen close to 40% increase in our Covid hospitalization over last week and its been a consistent trend over last two to three weeks.”

She said they went from about 390 positive tests to almost close to 600 tests in positive admissions in the last week of testing.

Not many patients are on the ventilator, but she pointed out that we’re early on in the season of respiratory illnesses.

She said their numbers are collected on a weekly basis, ending on the previous Sunday.

Dr. Singh said that it is possible to get both the Covid and the flu shot on the same day.

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