The spike in COVID plus flu and RSV is putting Bay Area hospitals under pressure
Bay Area health officials said Wednesday that there has been a significant increase in flu activity and others
respiratory viruses
since the beginning of the month, it has led to a sharp increase in visits to emergency departments and is straining health systems across the region.
“This is the first year that we’re not only dealing with COVID, but with increased flu activity and unusually high levels of RSV,” said Dr. Sarah Rudman, Santa Clara County deputy health officer, during a press briefing. . “These are two other types of viruses that can also cause the same respiratory symptoms as COVID, but they can also cause severe respiratory illness — or even life-threatening illness.”
The
Santa Clara County
The health department said the percentage of emergency room visits for flu-like illnesses is three times higher this year than it was during the 2019-2020 flu season, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the agency launched a
wastewater data dashboard
to track flu concentrations in the county — one of the first of its kind in the US
The tool, which is widely used to monitor the level of the coronavirus, serves as an early warning system for hospitals and health systems.
“Right now, the wastewater is showing an increase in flu levels in every part of our county — in every sewer that we monitor,” Rudman said.
Bay Area pediatric hospitals are seeing an increase in cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a common viral illness that can cause breathing problems in infants and young children and the elderly. It is part of a national wave that has become particularly serious in some parts of the country.
On Monday, California
health officials reported the first death
a child under the age of 5 who was infected with influenza and RSV. The state Department of Public Health did not disclose where the death occurred. and it is not clear which virus caused the death.
“We’ve seen a spike in all of our RSV cases,” said Dr. Vidya Mony, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, during a briefing Wednesday. “If you look at a lot of curves, it’s almost linear. That’s significantly more than we’ve seen in the last few years.”
UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital is seeing “very high volumes” of respiratory illnesses including RSV, said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Joan Zoltanski.
“As soon as a bed opens up now, there’s someone waiting to take that bed,” she said. “We have a lot of patients in the emergency department, and the patients who are there without needing very urgent care are waiting much, much longer than usual.”
On Wednesday, Tamalpais Pediatrics, which has several clinics in Marin County, sent out an advisory to its customers that said, “We are experiencing an unprecedented volume of calls, portal messages and visits.”
dr. Nelson Branco of Tamalpais Pediatrics said his offices typically receive 200-300 calls and 100-120 visits on Mondays this time of year. The practice received more than 500 calls Monday and is seeing 170-180 patients a day this week, with those for day care mostly for respiratory illnesses, Branco said.
“It was high a few weeks ago. Now it’s at a point I’ve never seen in my more than 25 years of practice,” Branco said.
The amount is not equal to the more severe cases of infection, Branco said, but “the few we had to send to the hospital, we struggled to find a place for them.”
Branco noted that after an early spike in RSV cases, practice has seen more flu cases over the past week or two.
“Those who are the sickest in our office, at all ages, tested positive for the flu,” he said.
“Over the past several weeks, in both our inpatient and outpatient settings, we have seen an acute increase in patients,” Mony said. “The predominant cause of these hospitalizations is secondary to respiratory viruses, particularly RSV.”
RSV cases fell dramatically in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. But they
grew last summer
as COVID-related restrictions eased. While this year’s rise started off slower, positive tests have recently surpassed the numbers from this time last year,
according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mony added: “I have also noticed an increase in COVID-19 infections in our pediatric patients over the past few weeks.”
Although flu and COVID-19 vaccines are widely available, there are no shots available to prevent RSV. Health officials are instead urging Bay Bay residents to follow measures that also curb the spread of COVID-19 — washing hands frequently, wearing masks when indoors and keeping the sick at home as much as possible.
“While all of these viruses can sometimes cause mild illness in most older children or young adults, they are all particularly dangerous to our youngest children, our oldest adult members of the community and people with other health problems,” Rudman said. “Right now we are already seeing these diseases affecting our youngest children.”
Aidin Vaziri and Matt Kawahara are staff writers for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
title_words_as_hashtags]