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As a spike in pediatric respiratory disease pushes children’s hospitals across Tennessee to their limits, officials at Erlanger Children’s Hospital say they are ready to treat more pediatric COVID-19 patients as the delta variant highly contagious sweeps predominantly unvaccinated populations.
The current outbreak of COVID-19 is particularly problematic for children, as children under 12 cannot be vaccinated and the vaccination rate among adolescents is low, leaving these age groups among the most susceptible to new infections. COVID-19.
“We knew with the delta variant that the kids were going to be affected more,” said Dr Andrea Goins, pediatrician and chief of staff at Erlanger Children’s. “We have a lot of things in place within the children’s hospital, as well as within the Erlanger system, to work together and collaborate. So I have no doubt that we will do what we need to do to do. make sure children are taken care of. “
At a press briefing on Friday, Tennessee Health Commissioner Dr Lisa Piercey said the state’s children’s hospitals were already nearing capacity before the delta variant began to result in cases of coronavirus and hospitalizations. Indeed, some respiratory viruses normally seen in children only during the winter months – particularly respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV – make children nauseous when they return to more in-person activities without face masks and other precautions that limit the spread of disease. In addition, hospitals must continue to treat normal illnesses and injuries.
“So the added burden (…) of children hospitalized with COVID is probably just enough to tip the scales in some cases where RSV persists,” she said.
Because RSV data isn’t something the state normally tracks, and the symptoms of this disease and COVID-19 are so similar – especially in infants – Piercey said it’s hard to tell which one of the two is currently the most common among Tennessee children.
Goins said that teens and school-aged teens tend to be the pediatric groups most affected by COVID-19, and unless they have serious underlying conditions, they generally do well against it. disease. Congenital heart disease, type 1 diabetes and asthma are some of the major childhood conditions that contribute to more serious COVID-19 infections in children, she said.
“We haven’t seen a lot of infants and newborns who are affected by COVID, and this is definitely the range that is most affected by RSV,” she said.
Several factors make it difficult to resolve capacity issues in children’s hospitals, including staff shortages. The healthcare industry struggles with the same labor shortages as the rest of the country, and children need their own medical specialists to take care of them.
“They have different equipment, different drugs, different just about everything. I think people get used to thinking that kids are just little adults. It’s a whole different medicine,” Piercey said. . “This means we don’t have as much flexibility to vary our staff and recruit additional staff.”
Goins said ventilators are important items that are age and size specific, but at this point, she’s not worried about Erlanger’s child exhaustion.
“As the numbers change, that may be a different discussion. But at the moment we don’t have that concern,” Goins said, saying staff are bracing for a continued increase in patient numbers as schools come back.
“In pediatrics, we’re used to the influx and changes that happen seasonally, as well as going back to school,” she said. “We know that in pediatrics it’s very different during the summer months compared to the winter months, and if we have to treat summer like it’s winter, we’re ready to do it. . We are ready to face what lies ahead, Whatever it is. “
Contact Elizabeth Fite at [email protected] or 615-757-6673. Follow her on Twitter @ecfite.
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