Flu Cases 'High' In IL As COVID, RSV Illnesses Climb

ILLINOIS — As Illinois families gather for the holidays, they may come home with more than warm memories as Americans are being sickened by three viruses — seasonal flu, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and COVID-19.

RSV detections declined nationally during the week ending Saturday, after sharp rises since mid-October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the same time, seasonal influenza cases are ticking up in all but a handful of states, and COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all trending upward as well.

In Illinois, data shows that the state ranks in the high category for flu cases with health experts fearing that cases of the virus could be much worse this winter. Officials from the Illinois Department of Public Health reported this week that about 30 percent of residents who were tested for the flu were found to have the virus, and that 78 people had been admitted to intensive care units with the flu.

There have been 11 flu outbreaks across the state this week and for the season, more than 6,000 residents have tested positive for the flu.

In Illinois, many Illinois counties have jumped into the medium COVID-19 community category after positive cases of the virus have gradually built in recent weeks. State health officials announced 130 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents this week. In all, the CDC reported that 14,915 people across Illinois have tested positive for COVID-19 this week.

Children’s hospitals across the country are seeing a surge of sick kids. In Illinois, 30.7 percent of antigen tests for RSV came back positive this week, while 23.1 percent of PCR tests came back positive among pediatric patients across the state.

'Dramatic' Surge In Childhood Respiratory Diseases In DuPage County

In Illinois, pediatric bed occupancy data showed that 943 of 1,284 beds were in use as of Thursday, according to an NBC News analysis of Department of Health and Human Services data. The tracker is updated daily at 1 p.m. EST, according to NBC.

Nationally, the most overwhelmed states are Idaho at 104 percent, Arizona at 98 percent, Utah at 97 percent, Nevada at 96 percent, Rhode Island at 93 percent, and Kentucky at 91 percent.

Overall, U.S. hospital beds are at about 83 percent capacity, with 7.5 percent used by COVID-19 patients, according to HHS data. In Illinois, more than 76 percent of the hospital’s beds are in use with about 180 hospitals across the state reporting. Data shows that of the 27,568 beds available across Illinois, 21,018 are in use, including 1,428 for COVID-19 patients.

No Health Emergency Yet

Last month, pediatricians asked the Biden administration to declare a public health emergency that would give hospitals and providers more flexibility to care for children.

In their joint letter to President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Children's Hospital Association and American Academy of Pediatrics said “significant capacity issues in pediatric hospitals and communities require flexibilities that can only be provided through a formal emergency declaration.

The flexibilities were provided to care providers at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and “children’s providers require the same capacity support as they strive to keep up with increasing needs of infants, children, and adolescents.”

As of Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services had not declared a health emergency. It would allow for the waiver of certain Medicare, Medicaid, or Children’s Health Insurance Program requirements that would allow hospitals, physicians, and other healthcare providers to share resources and access emergency funding to keep up with the growing demands, specifically related to workforce support.

The reason for the tripledemic threat? Months of hunkering down and avoiding contact with others during the COVID-19 pandemic weakened Americans’ immune systems, according to health experts.

“Public health officials have been bracing for this possibility since early in the pandemic,” Dr. Michael Mina, chief science officer at eMed and one of the nation’s leading epidemiologists, said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

“The recent surges are fully expected ramifications of a new virus that caused massive swings in human behavior,” Mina said. “We know that immunity is working exactly as it was supposed to, and in this case, it means that we drained population-level immunity by not having exposures.”

Most children get an RSV infection by the time they’re 2, but people can be infected at any age and more than once in a lifetime, according to the CDC. The symptoms are typically similar to the common cold. But for the extremely young whose lungs aren’t fully developed, the very old, and people whose immune systems are compromised, RSV can lead to breathing difficulties.

“Right now, the problem really is just the volume of sick children, Dr. Thomas Murray, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Yale Medicine, said in a news release, “but we know how to help them.”