Winter is on the way, and with it come respiratory illnesses like cold, flu, and COVID-19. And nationwide, hospitals are seeing an alarming rise in cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which particularly affects children.

“It does send children to the hospital. It requires an intensive care unit … and it could be responsible for the deaths of individuals,” said Chicago Department of Public Health Medical Director Dr. Geraldine Luna. “After it's been diagnosed, unfortunately there's not much treatment. So it's symptomatic treatment and on occasion requires ventilation or mechanical ventilation at the intensive care unit.”

“RSV is a disease that causes 2.1 million hospital visits and 150,000 hospitalizations a year,” said immunologist and allergist Dr. Juanita Mora. “Right now we're seeing an early surge of RSV, which is causing a lot of pediatric intensive care units to be full.”

RSV symptoms begin presenting similarly to those of a cold — cough and runny nose. As the disease progresses, respiratory distress can require immediate emergency care. Mora offered advice on when RSV has become severe enough to take a child to the hospital.

“If the child starts having trouble breathing, so they're using their accessory muscles, which means their chest is moving up and down or the cough gets worse,” Mora said. “Signs of dehydration, they're not eating as much, they're not drinking enough fluids. For babies, they're not putting out as many diapers. These are signs that these children should go to the emergency department.”

While there are no vaccines available for RSV, both Luna and Mora advise everyone gets up-to-date on their COVID-19 boosters and flu vaccinations as winter approaches.

“We're seeing a lot of misinformation out there — (people) saying massive heart attacks (are) happening in children when it's not true. We really encourage our parents to get the information from authorized sources and get the right information,” Luna said. “Protection with this vaccine is incredible. We have had more than 600 billion individuals globally vaccinated with incredible success and efficiency and safety. Overall safety has always guided our decisions here in the United States and these vaccines are safe and they do prevent now infections, reinfections, hospitalizations and death.”