A disturbing proportion of “pandemic newborns” who lack immunity to respiratory infections wind up in the intensive care unit (ICU) in critical condition.
Children born during the Covid-19 pandemic are in need of urgent care since they are coming into contact with viruses including influenza, RSV, and Covid that they have never seen before, according to doctors.
The children were born and nurtured in an era when Covid-19 was essentially the only virus present in Australia.
Dr. Philip Britton, an infectious diseases pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, said a study of ICU admissions nationwide reveals infants are testing positive for both Covid and influenza at the same time.
‘Over the last month or so, we have seen four times admissions to hospital for flu in children as for Covid,’ Dr Britton told The Daily Telegraph.
Dr. Britton added that 5% of the kids who presented with co-infections were being admitted to the intensive care unit, a figure he called “extremely alarming.”
Because of the large number of admissions, the hospital system is under pressure even though about half of the youngsters did not have any pre-existing medical issues.
Some of the so-called “pandemic newborns” exhibit chest, brain, and heart inflammation brought on by influenza, Covid, and RSV.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in children, which can be very hazardous in newborns.
Severe cases can kill babies and toddlers, whose tiny airways have not yet fully formed and who struggle to cope with the infection.
‘Among that group who are previously well … It’s not just a chest infection, some of these children can be impacted with the flu affecting the heart and the brain,’ Dr Britton told The Daily Telegraph.
When there were only 355 instances per week of RSV in NSW three weeks ago, a warning was issued concerning the disease. Three weeks later, the number of cases has exploded to 3,775 per week.
A quarter of them experienced the potentially fatal bronchiolitis, and 40% of them required hospitalization.
Dr. John-Sebastian Eden, an expert on infectious diseases, claimed that the triple combination of RSV, flu, and Covid was clogging up the emergency room at Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital.
He informed Daily Mail Australia that a large three-way epidemic was now in progress.
With the opening of international borders, the flu and novel RSV strains have returned.
These are the three primary viruses that will require hospitalization, with Covid stacked on top.
During Covid, RSV continued to spread and split into two separate strains in the east and west of the country in the wake of Western Australia’s prolonged isolation.
Infectious disease researcher Dr John-Sebastian Eden said the triple whammy of RSV, flu and Covid was packing out the emergency department of Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital
Researchers were shocked by the sudden rise of the disease in the first year of lockdowns, fuelled by keeping childcare centres open despite Covid restrictions.
‘It was something we had never seen before,’ said Dr Eden. ‘Even in lockdown there was a lot of effort to keep childcare open.
‘You only need a small amount of virus to build up a chain of transmission.’
The disease subsided in 2021, but has now bounced back with the current outbreak.
Dr Eden believes cases in NSW have yet to reach their peak, but is now braced for the outbreak to spread nationwide.
He expects the disease to spread across the southern half of the country at similar levels in the coming weeks.
‘What happens is where you have an outbreak in NSW and we’ve got all those people travelling to other states from there, it then feeds outbreaks in other parts,’ he said.
The disease subsided in 2021, but has now bounced back with the current outbreak.