It’s that time of year for more sick kids at Upstate's Golisano Children's Hospital in Syracuse, but it has been pretty typical so far this year.
Upstate Pediatric Children’s Infectious Disease Expert Dr. Jana Shaw said there has been an uptick in respiratory infections as kids have returned to school. While COVID-19 and RSV get a lot of attention, she noted there are plenty of other rhinoviruses that can make a kid sick.
"They typically don't sicken children as much, however, they continue to circulate," Shaw said. "So the blip that we are seeing in terms of respiratory infections are just not anything unusual."
So far, she said there hasn’t been any early activity of RSV, which created a "triple-demic" last fall. But with all the attention on COVID-19 and RSV, Shaw said people shouldn’t forget about the flu. She said the southern hemisphere had a bad flu season this year, and that is often an early indicator of the flu up north. The good news, there is a vaccine for that.
"The vaccine that we have now available in the U.S. matches the circulating strains from the southern hemisphere and what the southern hemisphere experiences taught us that people who were vaccinated, they were 50% less likely to get hospitalized for flu," Shaw said.
Shaw said flu shots are safe for anyone six months or older.
