Respiratory symptoms accounting for one-third of child ER visits: BCCDC

Respiratory illness cases increase in B.C. The number of flu and RSV cases has been climbing in B.C., resulting in the return of a mask requirement in health-care settings.

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Roughly a third of emergency room visits involving children relate to respiratory symptoms, based on BC Centre for Disease Control data as of last week.

It comes as flu activity continues to increase, and at a time when RSV levels are also considered elevated.

“We’re seeing an increase in influenza,” acknowledged Dr. Jennifer Vines, the BCCDC’s interim medical director for public health response, in an interview with CTV News on Thursday. “We’re seeing RSV, which stands for respiratory syncytial virus, also quite active. It’s elevated and there are some early signs that it might be peaking.”

“The virus that causes that COVID-19, known as SARS-CoV-2 is also in the mix, really at fairly stable and low-to-moderate levels.”

The BCCDC stresses that it’s not too late to get your flu or COVID shots for this season.

“You know, people might speculate – ‘Oh, is this the peak, are we on the downhill side,’” said Vines. “Even if we’re on the downhill side, there’s still potentially a lot more illness to go this winter. Influenza can be serious for older adults, for young children and for pregnant women.”

And that flu vaccine rate is something infectious disease experts would like to see increase.

“Here’s the cautionary tale,” said Dr. Brian Conway, with the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre. “In Australia, their past flu season – so their winter, our recent summer – the rate of influenza vaccination dropped to below 40 per cent and they experienced a record number of cases of influenza, including hospitalizations and deaths.”

While the BCCDC is highlighting the elevated levels of flu and RSV in the community, the main difference between this respiratory illness season is the later peak.

“I would say this increase is a little bit later than we’ve seen in several years, but in general, a lot of what we look at – for example, emergency room visits for respiratory illnesses, primary care visits, outbreaks in long-term care facilities – when we look at a lot of those metrics, they look similar to past years,” said Vines.

The province’s response to the rising cases has been to restore mask requirements in health care settings, which kicked in this week.