RSV, Flu And COVID-19: How 3 Viruses Are Affecting Washington

WASHINGTON — As Washingtonians 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.

RSV cases in Washington were up to 200 percent higher than the year before at the end of October, and remain elevated, but have shown recent declines in line with national trends, according to CDC data.

Children’s hospitals across the country are seeing a surge of sick kids, including in Washington. Last month, state officials warned many pediatric facilities were operating well over capacity, creating long emergency department waits and other serious strains.

Flu activity also remains very high in Washington, according to the latest data from the state Department of Health. King County on Thursday confirmed its second pediatric flu death, an elementary school-aged child who died on Nov. 24.

"This is already shaping up to be a bad flu season; the positivity rate for flu tests is much higher at this early point in the flu season than we've seen in many years, and the volume of cases is increasing rapidly," Public Health - Seattle & King County officials wrote Thursday.

As for COVID-19 trends, Washington is currently in the CDC's low bracket for community transmission levels, and statewide data from the DOH show case counts relatively low and stable.

Overall, U.S. hospitals beds are at about 83 percent capacity, with 7.5 percent used by COVID-19 patients, according to HHS data. In Washington, approximately 93 percent of hospital beds are occupied, with COVID-19 patients accounting for about 5 percent.

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 the 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 health care providers to share resources and access emergency funding to keep up with the growing demands, specifically related to workforce support.

The reason for the so-called “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.”