<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the last few weeks, hospitals are seeing increase in number of seriously-ill RSV patients,\u201d <\/span>said <\/span><\/span><\/span>DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr Hassan said young children and elderly are coming to hospitals with severe pneumonia requiring oxygen, some needing intensive care and support of ventilators to help them survive the respiratory distress.<\/span><\/p>\n RSV is not new. We see it every year during winter months. RSV particularly affects young children. It can be life-threatening in infants and older adults.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMost years, infections typically occur in the late fall and winter, often overlapping with flu season. But since last year we are seeing early surges,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n The DAK President said RSV kind of took a backseat during Covid pandemic. People were hardly exposed to the virus because of Covid precautions like masking and social distancing. Now with reopening it seems to be coming back again.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cVery young children born just before or during the pandemic had no exposure to RSV and didn\u2019t build immunity against the virus. And now they are getting exposed to the virus and it is hitting them really hard,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n Dr Nisar said the symptoms of RSV include runny nose, cough, fever and difficulty in breathing. Infants can manifest with irritability, trouble breathing and refusal to feeds.<\/span><\/p>\n RSV is a respiratory virus and spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis year we have vaccine against RSV. The vaccine is recommended for people aged 60 years and older. The vaccine is also approved for pregnant women in their third trimester which will protect the new born babies\u2019 up to six months of age. For very young children we have RSV antibody which will help prevent severe disease in this vulnerable group,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTill we have vaccine available, people should continue with precautions like hand washing and cough etiquettes. If you are down with cough or fever stay home and wear a mask. Infants and very young children should be kept away from sick people,\u201d he added<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cOver the last few weeks, hospitals are seeing increase in number of seriously-ill RSV patients,\u201d said DAK President and influenza expert Dr Nisar ul Hassan. Dr Hassan said young children and elderly are coming to hospitals with severe pneumonia requiring oxygen, some needing intensive care and support of ventilators to help them survive the respiratory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}