Several cases of a common respiratory illness are making its way across the country and impacting lots of Iowans.

Greene County Medical Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. Laurie Connolly tells Raccoon Valley Radio Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) impacts more kids under the age of three by causing inflammation of the very small bronchioles, right before the lungs.

“And so if you think about a little tiny one, their trachea, their main breathing tube is the size of their pinky finger. And then the respiratory system continues to branch out from there, getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller as far as the tubes that we breathe in through until we get to the bronchioles, which are very, very tiny right before the lungs.”

Dr. Connolly points out typical RSV happens between October and April, with the peak season being from January through February. However, she says several cases of RSV were peaking earlier this summer in the southeastern portion of the country and according to the CDC, RSV is peaking now everyone.

Dr. Connolly explains one of the main reasons was brought on last year by the covid pandemic, where more people were masking and staying home when sick. 

“What’s kind of odd is we also had a whole group of children last year who didn’t get RSV. And thus their own immunization status against the current virus is probably less because of that. So we’re seeing, oddly, RSV in kids that are five and six needing to be hospitalized, where that was pretty unheard of before.”  

Dr. Connolly says according to the medical center laboratory, there were 30 tests for RSV in October and 19 were positive for RSV and 12 tests have been done from November 1st-11th with five positive cases of RSV.