Toddler Suffers Long Period of Seizures as RSV Spreads Among South Island Children | 1 NEWS

By Rachel Graham from rnz.co.nz

The highly contagious respiratory disease, RSV, is wreaking havoc across the country in hospital wards and child care centers.

Hospitals on the South Island are also affected, as RSV and other winter illnesses put pressure on services.

When Brittnay Beddoes from Christchurch took her one-year-old daughter, Meah, to the doctor on Monday, he told her it was an RSV manual.

Tuesday, Meah was even more downhill.

“She had had a 27-minute long febrile seizure that could not be stopped by anti-epileptic drugs,” Beddoes said.

“She was released that night from Christchurch hospital because they needed beds. And we were brought back by ambulance last night with her temperature of 41.7 degrees and her oxygen level over 70. So she was on oxygen all night. “

Today Meah has started to recover and Beddoes is hoping they will be home tonight.

She also has a newborn baby and now worries that the baby will also get sick.

Beddoes said the entire children’s room was full of babies who were coughing and crying with RSV from what she had heard from other parents.

At Linwood New Beginnings Kindergarten in Christchurch, only four of the 36 children usually present are there today.

The centre’s chief program teacher Stef Knight said in 10 years of teaching she has never seen so much illness.

“We don’t have anyone in our under-two room with a lot of parents bringing in kids with really nasty coughs, really high fevers. Really runny, brat, green, you know, noses so many of these cold and flu symptoms. “

Knight said they couldn’t be sure it was the RSV that caused the widespread illness, but they had a few parents who had confirmed through their doctors that their child had RSV.

She wants DHB to provide information on what they should do next.

“Be really kind to know, if this is this RSV setting in, how is there a specific downtime that we should have for families… once the fevers have subsided but the The child has always coughed Are they still Like there are all these things that we don’t really know how to best deal with, how to best inform parents.

“How do we protect ourselves? And obviously we don’t want to continue to see days where instead of 36 children we have four.”

RSV is a seasonal virus that circulates frequently in the community during the winter, and although it can be mild for those who have had it before, it can be very serious in young babies, the elderly and those with the immune system is weakened.

DHB calls for “extreme care”

In a statement released tonight, the Southern District Health Board calls on the public to use “extreme care” when visiting its children’s wards, neonatal and neonatal intensive care units and intensive care units.

DHB wanted to do everything possible to reduce the transmission of RSV and other respiratory illnesses to vulnerable patients.

Pediatricians Professor Barry Taylor and Dr Ian Shaw said hospitals in Dunedin and Southland insisted that whānau with symptoms (runny nose or cough) should not visit children in children’s wards or patients in intensive care and intensive care units.

Southern DHB Emergency Department clinical directors said they were seeing a significant increase in patients of all age groups, especially children, with probable viral respiratory infections compared to the same time period. last year.

They said the children’s ward at Southland Hospital was full this week, as the wave of respiratory illnesses in the North Island begins to move south. The Dunedin children’s ward currently has available capacity, but many children are actively supported in the community.

At Dunedin Hospital, the children’s unit has seen an increase in the number of children with breathing difficulties, but it is still within its capacity. In Southland, 9 out of 10 patients in isolation in the children’s ward are for respiratory illness.

“The increase in the number of children with respiratory infections is typically seen every winter, with a further increase this year as very few children were exposed to respiratory viruses during the Covid-19 lockdown last winter. “said Professor Taylor.

“This tells us that the measures taken during the lockdown were very effective in preventing the spread of these viruses and that when the members of whānau show symptoms, they can take similar measures to stop spreading their virus to other people. . “

Medical Officer of Health Dr Susan Jack this evening urged that sick children with colds or coughs be kept warm and at home and to see a doctor if they get worse.

Situation likely to worsen

The Canterbury District Health Board has had 41 confirmed cases of RSV since last Thursday and had more than 100 more children brought to the emergency department with respiratory infections this year than in 2019 – although it can confirm whether all had RSV because not all were tested for it.

Four scheduled surgeries were postponed on Tuesday due to an increase in the number of pediatric patients, but the board said even though it was stretched it was able to meet demand.

The country is unlikely to have experienced the worst of the impact of RSV, virologist Dr Sue Huang says the coming weeks will be critical to seeing the impact of RSV.

“Next month will be critical. And in July and usually RSV peaks later. Often the flu comes first, then RSV, and this year we don’t have flu, and RSV, usually around. August or September, ”Dr Huang said.

Huang said the first symptoms were very similar to a cold or flu with a fever or cough, and people who had encountered RSV before could have very mild symptoms.

Beddoes advises other parents to see a doctor as soon as their child shows signs of difficulty breathing.