RSV infections surge as hospitals brace for return of 'normal' respiratory virus season
CBC
On a weekday afternoon, coughs and cries echo throughout the brightly lit waiting room of the Just for Kids Clinic at St. Joseph's Health Centre in Toronto.
It's clear this year's respiratory virus season is already underway, said Dr. Anne Wormsbecker, chief of pediatrics at the hospital, one of three health-care sites making up Unity Health Toronto. While most children who arrive for outpatient appointments aren't given tests to figure out which virus is making them sick, she said inpatient units where patients are tested upon admission are seeing a striking trend.
"In the last couple of weeks, the respiratory syncytial virus — or RSV — has just shot up," she said.
Country-wide data also shows RSV is on the rise. So far, 1,220 cases have been detected since late August, with roughly five per cent of tests coming back positive, according to the most recent respiratory virus report from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
"Activity of RSV is increasing and slightly above expected levels for this time of year," the report noted.
The virus usually causes common cold symptoms, but can turn serious among both the young and old.
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SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is still circulating as well, and influenza activity is also increasing, although still within the typical levels for November, PHAC data shows.
After a roller-coaster of viral dynamics during the pandemic — including a period where influenza nearly vanished, followed by an unusual RSV surge last year — some say this season could mark a return to relative normalcy, but with SARS-CoV-2 now firmly in the mix.
However, "normal" doesn't mean it'll be smooth sailing for either the public or Canada's strained health-care teams, said McGill University infectious diseases specialist Dr. Donald Vinh.
"The pattern that we're seeing is not new, but it's the return of what we've been used to — with COVID now superimposed," he said.
In Canada, RSV typically poses a problem from October onward, said Vinh, with flu following behind, then possible subsequent waves of infections later in the season.
"That's actually been the norm, for years, if not decades," he said. "But COVID wiped that out — not the public health response to COVID, but [the virus] itself.
"It was such a transmissible virus that it smothered the transmission of other viruses until we had a partially immune population to COVID."
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