The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) outbreak is greatest in New South Wales, where cases have multiplied tenfold in just three weeks.
With no vaccine available, the illness, which can be lethal in very young children and kill 120,000 people each worldwide, displays symptoms that are similar to those of Covid and the flu.
Now, two moms have spoken to Daily Mail Australia about how RSV nearly killed their kids and the frantic battle to save them.
At just eight weeks old, Oscar Whillock of Lisa Whillock’s family began experiencing breathing problems at their Terrigal, New South Wales, home.
Oscar was twice hurried to the nearby Gosford Hospital by the frightened mother.
There, doctors performed swab tests and tested the family’s oxygen levels before sending them back home.
But after a few days, the little boy showed no symptoms of recovery, so the family went back to the hospital, where tests indicated he had RSV.
Oscar also had bronchiolitis, a lung infection that makes breathing difficult by inflaming the airways and causing a buildup of mucus.
Babies and young children, whose airways have not yet fully developed and who do not have enough immunity to infection, are particularly vulnerable to severe instances.
He lost so much ground so quickly, Ms. Whillock told Daily Mail Australia. He could have passed away when his respiration stopped on Sunday.
His mother, who was in shock, witnessed her infant begin to experience respiratory arrest and then stop breathing.
Doctors eventually transported him to the acute care unit at Sydney Children’s Hospital at Randwick in Sydney’s eastern suburbs due to his deteriorating health.
Oscar was looked after by specialized nurses and put on a breathing machine.
The eight-week-old’s persistent coughing caused a partially collapsed lung, and he needed antibiotics before several chest x-rays revealed that his condition was improving.
She said seeing her eight-week-old hooked up to a breathing machine was ‘heartbreaking’ and the ‘worst time’ of her life.
‘I don’t think I’ve fully processed it. It was awful,’ she said. ‘I just felt so helpless and so sorry for him. There was nothing I could do.’
After six tumultuous days, Oscar was discharged, but he spent another night in ICU six weeks later when his whole family was struck down with the flu.
Ms Whillock said she regrets not getting vaccinated earlier and suspected her two-year-old son was inadvertently bringing viruses home from daycare.
She said the flu was ‘100 times worse’ than having Covid and said she had experienced a ‘solid week of aches’.
‘I’ve never known a flu season like it,’ the mum-of-two said.
Ms Whillock remains fearful that her little boy will end up in the ICU again and wakes up in the night terrified her baby has stopped breathing.
She says she finds herself constantly putting her hand on his chest to check he’s okay.
Dominique Peters-Kelly, from Sydney’s north shore, also feared she would lose her baby girl when the one-year-old was struck down by the virus last month.
The mother-of-two told Daily Mail Australia she had to take her little girl to hospital three times in just six weeks.
The one-year-old was first taken to Northern Beaches Hospital after her mum noticed she had begun to ‘gasp for air’ after being particularly ‘whingey’ the night before.
Doctors decided to transport their tiny patient to the children’s hospital at Randwick, where she was sedated and placed on a breathing machine.
‘I thought she was going to die. It was on another level,’ Ms Peters-Kelly said.’Everything they were doing to support her wasn’t working.’
Ms Peters-Kelly said her husband burst into tears after seeing their baby hooked up to tubes in the hospital.
The tiny child spent three days on a breathing machine in intensive care with her diagnosis of the common cold.
Ms. Peters-Kelly said that her daughter, happily, made a full recovery and had follow-up appointments with a lung specialist and a high-risk asthma clinic.
She still feels hesitant about returning her child to the daycare, where she believes she contracted the infections just two weeks before.
The mother of two made the choice to keep her daughter at home during the wintertime sickness, but she finally plans to enroll her in daycare in the summer when she should be more “robust.”
The chief medical officer of Healthdirect, Dr. Nirvana Luckraj, reported that the health service has seen an increase in calls about respiratory viruses.
Australians can call a registered nurse through Healthdirect, who is available around-the-clock, seven days a week, to offer guidance on health issues.According to Dr. Luckraj, the amount of calls about respiratory issues had gone up across all age categories and was in accordance with the quantity of newborns who were presenting to hospitals.
She said a nurse would initially look for emergency symptoms, such as whether the youngster was rasping or having difficulty breathing, when a parent called Healthdirect.
A nurse also inquired as to whether the youngster was wheezing, drowsier than usual, or drinking half as much liquids as usual—all indications of respiratory issues.
Dr. Luckraj advised parents to seek medical attention as soon as possible because newborns are more susceptible to viruses.
RSV cases in NSW were only 355 per week when a warning was issued three weeks ago; however, by that time, cases had skyrocketed 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 told Daily Mail Australia that a large three-way outbreak was currently in progress.
With the opening of international borders, the flu and novel RSV strains have returned.
These are the three primary infections that will cause hospitalization, according to Dr. Eden, with Covid stacked on top.
Following Western Australia’s protracted isolation under Covid, RSV spread further and separated into two distinct strains in the east and west of the nation.
The dramatic surge in the disease during the first year of lockdowns, which was fueled by keeping childcare facilities open despite Covid restrictions, astounded researchers.
Dr. Eden remarked, “It was something we had never seen before.”
There was a lot of work done to maintain childcare available, even throughout the lockdown.
It takes very little virus to start a chain of transmission, according to this statement.
After declining in 2021, the illness has since reemerged with the current outbreak.
As he prepared for the outbreak to expand across the country, Dr. Eden stated that cases in NSW had probably not yet hit their peak.
In the upcoming weeks, he anticipated that the disease will spread at a comparable rate over the southern half of the nation.
“What occurs is that when there is an outbreak in NSW and we have so many people traveling from there to other states, it then feeds outbreaks in other places,” he explained.