An early peak of viral infections in Texas children, including the Rio Grande Valley, is prompting concern among parents and health officials trying to stave off a triple-threat at home, hospitals and doctor’s offices.
Parents are taking precautions to safeguard their children’s health, but masks failed the Ruiz family.
“I think she’s like one of the only ones that wears a mask still at school,” Juan Ruiz said about his eight-year-old daughter, Carolyn.
The family of four kept washing their hands, wearing masks in enclosed places, and kept large bottles of hand sanitizer at home, work and “everywhere” long after the pandemic subsided, Carolyn’s father said.
But not everyone continued to practice these measures.
“She was telling me that some of her classmates were throwing up and had a fever. So I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh, there’s just a matter of time before she gets sick,’” Ruiz said.
The prediction came true.
Carolyn went home one day feeling sick. She had the flu, but started getting better quickly.
“She recovered, like maybe in three days,” Juan Ruiz recalled, but she didn’t stay healthy long. “She got sick again. And that’s when we all started getting sick.”
Carolyn’s ten-year-old sister, Angela, and their parents ended up with the flu.
And while they hope the flu is behind them now, some families were not so lucky.
Parents of a 3-year-old child in Hidalgo County are mourning her death after she became a victim of the flu last month, a fact confirmed by the state last week.
School closures have yet to be reported in Texas due to flu outbreaks, but according to the weekly influenza report from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, outbreaks reported last week were mostly in school settings.
Testing in the Valley also shows an active flu season.
The Ruizes are staying vigilant for other viral infections, though.
“It’s very scary right now with that RSV going around,” Juan Ruiz said.
RSV, or Respiratory Syncytial Virus, resurfaces every year. But after the pandemic, the season is different.
“Right now, it’s a three-headed monster: RSV, flu and corona,” Dr. Ivan Melendez, the Hidalgo County health authority, said.
Unlike other diseases, doctors do not need to report positive cases to the state, but the quick rise in cases in both RSV and the flu are keeping medical professionals on edge.
“Normally we start seeing flu-like symptoms like in December and January. And now it started like way back in August,” Nancy Aguilera, a physician assistant at Dr. Juan Aguilera’s pediatric office in Pharr, said.
The office purchases about 1,000 flu tests every year and they tend to last from September through April. This year, office staff had already used more than 700 by October.
It’s a trend seen throughout Texas.
Parents are taking their children to the doctor after noticing a fever, body aches, nasal congestion, vomiting, or nausea. Some children test positive for flu; some test positive for RSV or COVID-19. But some are testing positive for more than one virus at a time.
Aguilera said the more distressing cases are those involving RSV and infants.
“I see about five or six cases in kids under a year old. And they do get severe symptoms like a lot of coughing, congestion and trouble breathing, shortness of breath,” Aguilera said.
RSV can cause a lower respiratory tract illness such as bronchiolitis or pneumonia in children under the age of 2, and in more severe cases, it can result in respiratory failure, according to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.
“This virus causes a lot of mucus, and it’s very sticky. So they develop a lot of phlegm and it goes into their little lungs, and they’re not able to clear it as well as an older person,” Aguilera explained.
Parents do well by staying vigilant and taking their children to the doctor when symptoms first surface, but some are resorting to hospital emergency rooms.
“I know in national news, we’ve seen how some of the ERs are overwhelmed, and we are seeing that and around the San Antonio area right now,” Dr. Emilie Prot, the regional medical director for the area, said.
The Valley is not seeing that saturation, however.
“I have not seen repercussions on our number of beds in the ICU,” but Prot noted, “our emergency rooms have been seeing a lot of respiratory illnesses coming through the doors.”
The prevailing notion about the higher rate of infection among children is the lack of exposure during the pandemic.
“It becomes pretty obvious that the reason why we’re seeing more RSV is because people in the community do not have that immunity that we usually have,” Melendez said. “Because for the last couple of years, children have been sequestered at home, not going to school and getting exposed.”
Doctors recommend parents take precautions at home by continuing to practice safe measures they learned during the pandemic: hand-washing, avoiding crowds, social distancing indoors, and staying home when an infection is contracted.
Early testing for RSV, influenza and COVID-19 can be helpful tools to keep sick children home and contain exposure at school. And while there is no current vaccine for RSV, parents can opt to have their children vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu to prevent severe cases.
“So is it a busy year? Yes. Is it a dramatically busy year? No,” Melendez said, anticipating questions from the public. “So then what’s the big deal? Well, the big deal is we’re seeing it a lot earlier. We’re seeing it in early October, late September, which is unusual for us to see so early, which makes us extremely apprehensive about what awaits in the next couple of months. And that’s why we want to get the message out. If you have the flu, stay at home, treat it seriously. Cover your face and for God’s sake get the shot.”
