Your kid is coughing, sneezing, and has a runny nose. So is it a cold, COVID, the flu, or RSV? This episode is all about RSV or respiratory syncytial virus. How do you tell it apart from other illnesses? Who should get vaccinated?
On this episode of Mayo Clinic Kids, pediatrician Dr. Robert Jacobson joins us to talk about this common virus and how to keep your family safe during RSV season and beyond.
Want more Mayo Clinic Kids? Find us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Read the transcript:
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Hi! I’m Dr. Angela Mattke, a pediatrician with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and I specialize in helping parents make sense of medical issues. On each episode of “Kids Health Matters,” we talk to different medical experts to get the latest pediatric research and recommendations. This episode: RSV.
Let’s play a game, Cold flu, COVID, or RSV. I’ll name a symptom and you tell me which of those illnesses it’s usually a symptom of. All right. Coughing.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
The common cold, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, influenza or flu, or COVID 19, any one of these can cause a cough.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
What about a sore throat?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
Actually, 10 percent of COVID presents in children as a plain sore throat. Colds or common colds are more likely when they cause a sore throat to be associated with a runny or congested nose. Influenza can certainly cause a sore throat that would strike a person having it as just as bad as a strep throat. Really all four can cause a sore throat.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
You’re making this seem really crystal clear and easy. What about sneezing?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
Sneezing, we’re going more often to a common cold, but admittedly respiratory syncytial virus particularly for older children and healthy adults can cause a runny and sniffly and congested nose. The influenza typically is marked by having a cough, fever, or sore throat and fever, but often in about 50 percent of the cases can give a stuffy, runny nose, like a common cold. COVID, is a great mimic and could also cause a stuffy, runny nose. Oh, yeah.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Okay. What about wheezing?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
Wheezing is far more common in infants with their first bout of RSV. A good percent of infants on their first bout of RSV and almost all infants under the age of one will get RSV during the season. Up to 30 percent will wheeze or have lower respiratory infections, such as pneumonia or pneumonitis.
We don’t see as much wheezing with the other three. The common cold is not known to cause wheezing, but it can cause an asthma exacerbation for individuals previously diagnosed with asthma. Similarly, COVID and influenza can bring out wheezing in a person with diagnosed asthma.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
How about fatigue?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
All four can cause fatigue and one of the reasons why a mainstay of recovering from a viral illness is bed rest.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Last one, loss of taste.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
This is surprising because most of us associate this with just the COVID virus. It was one of the hallmarks particularly at the beginning of the pandemic that we would see people fear and express concern over their loss of taste and smell. But it turns out RSV, influenza, and the common cold can all mess with our ability to taste and smell.
Frankly, anything that can affect or infect our nose is going to put our taste at risk. Sometimes this is temporary. Sometimes this is long lasting, but any one of these viruses can cause, not necessarily the long lasting part of it, but the initial presentation.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Excellent.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
You can’t diagnose RSV or COVID by its symptoms.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Good take home message. Your kid is coughing, sneezing, and has a runny nose. So is it a cold, COVID, the flu, or RSV? The last of those, RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, is our focus this episode. Much like colds, COVID, and the flu, it’s super common. Most kids will have had RSV by the time they turn two.
How do you tell RSV apart from other illnesses? Do you even need to? When should you seek treatment versus letting it resolve on its own? We also know some people are at higher risk of complications from RSV. With immunizations widely available, who should get them?
This episode, we’re joined by Dr. Robert Jacobson, one of my fellow pediatricians at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He’s here to talk about this common virus and how to keep your family safe during RSV season and beyond. Bob, welcome to the show. I’m so glad that you’re here.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
I’m delighted to be here to talk about one of my favorite topics, how we can prevent infectious diseases.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Absolutely. It’s always a topic on parents’ minds, especially when they have little ones around, or elderly people, or people that are at higher risk for infections. All right, we’ll move on to the basics. What is RSV and who gets it?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
RSV is one of the most common and one of the most contagious respiratory infections. RSV stands for respiratory syncytial virus. We call it RSV for short and to avoid spelling embarrassment. It is so common that almost every infant will get a bout during the months that it is seasonal, which for most of the United States is November through March. Frankly, 70 percent of the parents taking care of that child will get RSV. Now, the first bout can be very severe, as we said, with wheezing and lower respiratory tract, that is lung inflammation, and that can be so severe it can lead to hospitalization.
Repeated bouts of RSV that happen throughout life are much more likely to be without a fever and without a lot of malaise and without a lot of lower respiratory symptoms, more like a common cold, but they’re still just as contagious.
It does no good to say, “Well, at least he doesn’t have the wheezing. He can go back to school and I can go back to work and disregard my need for hand washing and masking.” You are a risk to other people. Older people too, particularly people older than 75, but people over 60 who have a medical complicating illness that puts them at high risk for bad disease with ours, we can get really sick from this. Really, really sick.
In fact the death rate from being hospitalized with RSV is higher in the United States than the death rate of being hospitalized with COVID or flu. Think about that. It’s a bad virus. We only discovered this virus back in the 1950s and it’s been a race to develop some sort of immunization we can give infants to keep them out of the hospital and keep them from wheezing. We’ve discovered a few things along the way in that journey.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
It sounds like adults are very high risk and are more likely to have potentially death from RSV, is that correct?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
I would say that the hospitalization rate and the death rate in the large group of older adults is much higher, but you’ve got to remember, infancy is a very compressed period of time. We’re talking about 200 to 300 infant hospitalizations every year, but that’s among 4 million infants. Then we’re talking about 50 to 60, RSV among older adults. We’re talking about tens of millions, if not closing in on 100 million people from which we get that of 50 to 60,000.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
You mentioned there’s this seasonality to it, but you can continue to get infected year after year, and sometimes multiple times in a year. Why is there a risk that you continue to get infected from RSV year after year? Why doesn’t our body develop some type of immunity?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
It’s really tricky because our mindset is that you get a disease, you suffer the complications of the disease, but then you’re lifelong immune to that disease. That’s a great way of thinking about measles. It’s not a great way of thinking about chickenpox, because every so often an adult sneaks out as shingles.
Actually, the new model, all of these diseases you talk about like the common cold, RSV, COVID and influenza, we don’t get much immunity, but for different reasons. Let’s go through them.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
The common cold in RSV, we get the same virus without much mutation over and over again and our body just doesn’t do a good job making a durable immunity. Influenza, we make a really good durable immunity that lasts at least a year, starts wearing off after a few years, but meanwhile, the virus is so common during its season, circulating the entire globe, infecting person after person and mutating. By the time it comes around the next year, we’re talking about enough mutations that make the previous immunities less good.
COVID is a mutator too. In fact, our current vaccine model is based on the idea that almost all of us have had at least one COVID infection. The vaccine is designed to boost natural and previously acquired immunity through vaccines, but tackle the current circulating viral strain.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
RSV is, in general, very super common, right? It’s gonna be happening year after year. Most children have it at some point, almost every year. With that in mind, what’s the appropriate level of concern for parents when it comes to RSV? Is it a big deal or not?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal because when it infects an infant for the first time, there’s a good chance that infant is going to get a lower respiratory infection. That is a lung infection of either wheezing or wet lung that behaves just like a bad case of pneumonia. Many of those kids end up in the hospital because they’re unable to eat and drink. Their oxygen levels are lower than they should be. Also the child is really working hard, and we don’t have medicine for them.
Adults and children can all help keep infants out of the hospital and keep them free of pneumonia and bronchiolitis. The way they do that is stay home when you’re ill with a cold or a cough. Practice good handwashing with soap and water. If you have to go out, mask up, cover your cough, because you might be doing just fine with what seems like a head cold, but giving it to a family that might take it home to their baby could do that baby in and make the parents lives miserable.
We should consider good handwashing and all colds and coughs a big deal, if only to protect our fellow people among us, the families, our neighbors and the children. We have a similar responsibility about RSV in older, frailer adults who could suffer a life-threatening condition that lands them in the hospital from RSV. While most of us get it year after year and we don’t have an immunization or vaccine that works for the majority of us, we do have things we can do.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
RSV is a super contagious, super common respiratory virus. It’s one that our bodies aren’t very good at building natural immunity to. Most kids will get it at some point. However, babies who get RSV for the first time, and older adults with certain risk factors can have complications from it. In fact, the death rate in people hospitalized with RSV is higher than those with COVID and the flu.
While most people with RSV won’t experience life-threatening complications, it’s important we all take it seriously. Trying to stop the spread of RSV reduces the risk that someone more vulnerable will get it. As we already mentioned, RSV symptoms have a lot of overlap with other respiratory illnesses. Let’s figure out when we do or don’t need to know the difference. Bob, I know we talked about this a little bit already, but what are the general symptoms of RSV in either infants or young children that parents should watch for?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
The striking ones that would suggest the child is getting RSV would include fever, runny nose, cough, and in a good, up to a third of them, wheezing. Now, while that sounds like, “Well, that could be the flu, that could be COVID, that could be the common cold,” but if the child’s fever is causing a fair amount of discomfort and the child’s achiness from the virus is preventing hydration while they lose more fluid from the fever, then it’s cause for concern and a medical practitioner should evaluate that infant and decide whether or not the infant can be cared for at home and what changes to make at home to care for the infant.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Since we only really treat the symptoms of RSV, how much does it matter knowing whether it’s RSV, COVID, the flu, or a cold? Or in other words, do we actually need to test to make sure it’s RSV?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
We don’t necessarily need to test everyone for RSV to prove whether they have it or not, but an infant who is going to be possibly admitted to the hospital, we do test for RSV to find out what we should do for isolation.
Because this is seasonal, we’re often admitting a lot of babies with RSV. Frankly for children under five years of age, pre pandemic and post pandemic, 10 percent of all their hospitalizations year long are due to RSV. It’s a big hospitalizer.
We don’t have a special medicine or treatment to give the child, but we do need to know what children that child should be with and what child shouldn’t. Toddlers and infants, we can’t mask. They are going to be sharing the germs with those in the room. That’s why we test for RSV.
But for a child who shows up in the office with a fever, decreased eating, but is still drinking, is still urinating and has an element of wheezing, we suspect RSV. We don’t need to test for RSV.
Because we’re trying to control COVID, we do test for Covid, and some of our institutions have linked the COVID and RSV test together, especially during the pandemic. As a result, you often find out if your child has RSV or not, but it’s not going to change that child’s management.
Similarly for a lot of institutions such as ours, the flu virus test is linked with the RSV test, and we might need to test an infant for flu because we have antivirals for young infants who are at higher risk for complications from flu. Again, we don’t have antivirals for RSV, so it’s more important that we find out if it’s flu or not.
The testing is not as important. You’re in the hospital. You’re at risk for complications from your RSV, it’s good to know whether you have RSV or something else, and ruling out other viral illnesses is important, just as ruling out COVID is important, because if the symptoms persist, you’ve got to start saying, “is this long COVID, or is this the increasingly rare multi system inflammatory syndrome, or is this some other virus on top of RSV?” Similarly, for older adults, it may help guide therapy as well.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
What about for a parent that’s at home wondering if their child is experiencing more severe symptoms of RSV and when they should bring them in, whether it’s to the emergency department or the clinic?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
The rules are somewhat similar whether it’s RSV or another viral infection. A fever that lasts more than 72 hours, even if it’s coming and going, is a warning sign that something is wrong. Either a child is suffering from dehydration and has persistent fever from that, or the child has developed a bacterial superinfection, or some other problem is going on. If you’re repeatedly getting to 101 or higher over a 72 hour period and it goes beyond those three days, that’s a time to bring them in.
A child who is under eating and under drinking may be at risk for dehydration and it’s particularly a problem the younger you are. Because you have a smaller body mass, you don’t have the reserve to tolerate missing a couple meals and not drinking since the day before. I’ve seen adults go the whole day not drinking. I don’t recommend it, but I’ve seen them do it. But they have reserves. Infants don’t, and they can get very irritable.
It can prevent them from sleeping and frankly getting dehydrated can actually make it hard for you to eat and drink because it makes you nauseous and you want to throw up even though you need it. Parents should be suspicious of their child’s hydration status if they’re under-eating. Particularly the younger child and infant.
A sign of mild dehydration would be decreased frequency of urination, less tears when they cry, drier, stickier mouth, more concentrated urine. Moderate dehydration, you might even see their soft spot, when they’re sitting up, sink in on an infant where their soft spot is still open on their skull. Moderate to severe dehydration as a child is actually losing weight, though it may be difficult for you to detect on a home scale, and not urinating for really long periods of time, such as eight hours or more. These are warning signs that we need to take a look at your child and see what we can do to help the child.
Children can have a very hard time breathing with RSV, even when it’s just in the nasal passages. If you see your child struggling to breathe and you can’t relieve it at home with nasal saline and suctioning, we need to see that child. It may be a lower respiratory problem and not an upper respiratory problem.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
One other thing I might add is some of these respiratory illnesses, we see them peak on their symptoms and get worse on a certain day. Is that the case with RSV and what should parents expect through the course of their illness?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
My experience with RSV and what I read is that over the first 24, 48 hours is the worst, typically. Then, over the next week, it just gets better and better. Of course there are exceptions to it. We’ve certainly had children, even this season, who had two, three weeks of symptoms. At least one of my patients has had RSV twice now in this season. It caused wheezing both times. It’s not supposed to do that in the infant’s second bout of RSV.
But RSV typically is at its worst and at its most contagious in the first few days. Of note, infants tend to be more contagious for a longer period of time than adults and older children. Infants may remain contagious a week or two after they first get ill.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
The hallmarks of RSV are fever, runny nose, cough, and sometimes wheezing. For a mild case of RSV, we generally don’t need to test to confirm it. We use testing for more serious cases, like when we need to decide if a kid can be in a hospital room with other kids who have RSV. Testing is also helpful to make sure it’s not COVID, the flu, or any disease that might have different treatment options.
If you think your kid has RSV, and you’re trying to decide whether to bring them in, things to look for are: 1, a fever of about 101 or higher that comes and goes for 72 hours. 2, undereating, underdrinking, or other signs of dehydration. Or 3, difficulty breathing that can’t be resolved with home remedies. If you see any of these, it’s a good idea to bring them in to see a doctor. Now let’s talk about how we prevent and treat RSV. You touched a little bit on this before, but what’s the treatment for your garden variety case of RSV?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
For the older toddler who’s already had this before, or the child, or the parent, the treatment is bed rest, a focus on hydration, continue to eat small, frequent meals, relieve the pain and ache of a viral disease with or without a fever with something like acetaminophen, which goes by the common brand name Tylenol, good handwashing and masking if you have to be with others to prevent spread, and that’s the basic tenant.
For a younger child nasal saline and bulb aspiration can really help clear the nostrils. For older children, nasal saline, and for adults, nasal saline and just blowing your nose can help relieve that congestion.
We don’t have great cough medicines. We used to think that codeine and dextromethorphan were wonderful cough medications. Then randomized controlled trials that blinded the parents as to what they were giving their child found two teaspoons of honey work just as well as two teaspoons of dextromethorphan, sort of putting an end to our dream that we had some over-the-counter medications that would help.
Similarly, Sudafed, Phenylephrine, and some of the other antihistamines and decongestants and expectorants, all were marketed as though they would be great cures to shorten the common cold or other illnesses, but they’ve turned out to cause more side effects, particularly in younger children, and fail to really shorten their illness or make them comfortable. You can’t fool your body into thinking you don’t need the bed rest and the hydration. You gotta stick to the basics.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
Does every case of RSV require seeing a doctor, especially in children? Or can it resolve on its own just like the common cold and other things?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
I would say that most cases of RSV are not seen by doctors and do not result in doctor visits, and most parents need to bring in children where they strongly suspect RSV.
But there’s a catch. The older child who was exposed to the infant who had RSV. The parents then notice they’re coming down with a runny nose and a sore throat and cough and so is their older brother. If they’re old enough, two years and older, you still ought to test for COVID. You’re symptomatic, and you have the same symptoms COVID can have, and certainly during the RSV, flu, COVID season, we can see a family plagued with more than one virus.
While you don’t need to go in to see a doctor or nurse practitioner, you should test for COVID just to know that you don’t have it. Symptomatic people can test as soon as they recognize the symptoms with an antigen kit. We don’t have antigen kits for children under two and so we rely on PCR testing, which might require a nurse visit or a doctor visit.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
What’s the treatment for more severe cases of RSV, you know, those children being seen in our clinics, in the emergency departments, or requiring hospitalization?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
Often the focus will be on hydration with IV fluids and making the child more comfortable with their breathing. Now this Canon will involve antipyretics because as much as acetaminophen sounds like that’s what you use if you’ve got a fever, it actually helps with the pain and ache and strain of coughing and sore throat. Bed rest and monitoring to make sure you don’t need oxygen and occasionally oxygen therapy. But frankly, most children with RSV, even when hospitalized, benefit more from the hydration than they do the oxygenation. There are some rare children who will need more. They’re going to need to be intubated.
But that is so rare. More common in those older, frail adults that we have to go to such measures as intubation and ventilation within an intensive care unit setting.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
A lot of parents ask me for nebulizer treatments, which for anyone who doesn’t know, is usually used to treat asthma with a medication in mist form. Do things like asthma treatments help with RSV?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
We used to try to treat these children as though they had asthma. We would throw all sorts of asthma medicines at them, but it really didn’t help. It didn’t shorten their hospital stay. It didn’t keep them out of the hospital.
The nebulizer is an old fashioned treatment. I don’t like using it with my asthma patients. It’s not as portable, it’s noisy. It takes a long time and it never really did work for children with RSV. It’s still not a good old fashioned remedy to haul out and try again.
It’s so frustrating because we want something to work. I’d love to think albuterol would solve the wheezing that sounds exactly like asthmatics wheezing. Studies have shown that you can temporarily make the wheezing go away in a few minutes. Then 15, 30 minutes later, there’s nothing persisting there. Very different from a child with asthma, where you might see the albuterol have an effect for a good four hours.
Sometimes, when we’re suspicious the child may have underlying asthma because of a strong family history or a previous bout, we will trial albuterol either in the office or in the ED to see if we get a long lasting effect, but that experiment shouldn’t last more than four hours. If we don’t see an effect, we shouldn’t go there.
Because asthma exacerbations will often use steroids, we’ll tell ourselves and the parent we’re going to give steroids because by giving the steroids, we will ramp up the body’s ability to respond to albuterol, but it doesn’t work. Again, the randomized control trials show that it doesn’t prevent hospitalization. It doesn’t shorten the hospitalization.
We went through the same thing with hypertonic saline. It sounded so wonderful. But as we used it in practice, we found this is not a panacea. This is really not something that we recommend as a first line of therapy for RSV infection. Sometimes in hospital situations we have to try a variety of things and we get an inkling that maybe this was the thing for this particular child, but the population studies do not support these kinds of treatments.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
One of my favorite talks I ever listened to on RSV had a picture of a nebulizer machine smashing it and stuff like that. Because I think it makes us feel better to try something, but it’s like you got to hold yourself back because what you might actually be doing is causing more harm. Let’s talk a little bit about prevention. Who should RSV vaccine or immunizations?
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
That’s a great question because years ago we would say, most people don’t need a vaccine or immunization. In fact, we don’t have one. Now we have two vaccines and one very different monoclonal antibody. Let’s talk about babies first.
We have a monoclonal antibody that is so cheap that the federal government chose with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to include this in the routine immunization of all babies in the month before and during the season of RSV, approved it and recommended in such a way that all insurance products made under the Affordable Care Act and the Vaccines for Children program for uninsured children and children on state insurance are completely covered for this. It goes by the brand name Bayfortis and the generic name Nursivimab. And we call it the RSV immunization.
This is being treated like a vaccine, even though it’s not. It does not leave you with long lasting immunity. It does not depend on your immune system to respond, but it does something that most antibodies don’t do, and that is to last months and months and months without a drop in the level. In fact, you can give a newborn baby a dose in October and it will protect the baby through March.
I also want to talk about two other immunizations. We have two branded vaccines, one that goes by ABRYSVO and the other by Arexvy that will protect older, frailer adults who are at risk for bad complications from RSV.
Most Older adults do not need an RSV vaccine. We’re really talking about those over 75, those living in a nursing home, those debilitated by heart, lung, kidney, or liver disease. For the frail adults, a good conversation with your doctor will probably lead you to getting that vaccine.
Now we have two brands of them, Pfizer and GSK, both tested in older adults to reduce symptomatic RSV disease and possibly their hospitalizations and complications. Only one of those has been studied successfully in pregnant individuals, not because pregnant individuals get sick with RSV.
They get RSV just like the way all other young adults will get it when exposed. But pregnant individuals have the opportunity to protect their baby against RSV. Starting in September, where our season runs from November to March, we will start pregnant individuals with the Pfizer Abrivo RSV vaccine.
One dose given during the pregnancy early enough that it’s likely to be in the baby when the baby’s born, it takes about two weeks for the mother to make it. Now if the pregnant individual does get this vaccine and at least two weeks go by before the baby is born, that baby can skip that RSV immunization for the rest of the season. But it has to be two weeks or more and some babies are born premature and they have to get the Nirsevimab anyway. But this is a discussion you’ll have with your child’s provider in terms of getting the right RSV immunization when needed.
That’s three different ways to impact and protect babies and older people against this commonplace virus most of us hadn’t heard about years ago.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
That’s exciting that we have a lot more options than we had a year ago. But when it comes to, RSV, cold, flu, and other respiratory viruses and respiratory illness, do you have any helpful prevention tips for parents and kids? Sometimes I feel it’s just inevitable that they’re going to get some of these illnesses, especially if in daycare and school.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
It’s such a hard thing to do because we’re human beings. We want to be with other human beings. They’re going to sometimes come to school, come to work with colds and coughs. For some of our viruses, they’re actually at the most contagious when they’re just coming down with it. They may not even know they have the illness.
Okay. What are the rules that can reduce infection in your children and yourselves? Number one, parents, you got to teach your children and you got to practice it at home, not to share drinking cups, not to share straws, not to take a sip out of someone’s drink to see if the milk went bad.
Not to try something that someone else drank. It’s too tempting and it’s a bad habit because you’re basically putting that person’s saliva in your mouth and then you’re putting your saliva in their mouth and you’re teaching them to do that at school and at work and at play.
It’s a way to inoculate somebody with a virus. Practice not sharing drinking cups, silverware, forks, spoons. People with a cough and cold in the home still have to stay in the home. You can’t kick them out. Frankly, if they don’t have COVID, I don’t think you can really banish them to the room the way we’re banishing our loved ones during the COVID pandemic.
Still, they should not be setting the table. They should not be getting their own food and drink out of the refrigerator. They should not help cooking or serving. That’s a good lesson to learn at home because you don’t want them doing that at school, and you don’t want them accepting that at school either. You don’t want them trading sandwiches taking a bite of someone else’s apple. Particularly when they’re sick, teach them good, healthy habits about food service.
Handwashing. I can’t say enough about handwashing and maybe I should have led with it. Regular soap and water is the best tool against the viruses and germs that we have in our life. The best way to clean soil off our hands that contains other people’s viruses, to clean food off our hands, sticky food. Hand sanitizer sounds great. When you’re working in a hospital or in a clinic, we use it a lot, maybe five times for every time I wash with a bar soap and water or a foaming soap and water.
But that’s a medical setting that is not good for washing off food or sticky drinks. That’s not what I should do when I leave the bathroom. I should be using soap and water and so should you and your children. You gotta teach them before they go to the refrigerator before they eat. After they’re done using the bathroom, they’ve got to be washing with soap and water.
I frankly encourage parents at the end of a day from school or daycare that the child goes straight to the home sink and washes with soap and water before starting the afternoon or evening at home. A great habit to get into and remind them that that is a normal expected routine throughout the day, and you’re practicing it and sharing it with your child helps reinforce that, that’s normal and to be expected.
Those are the big things. When you do get a cold and cough, covering your cough, wearing a mask when you’re out in public, getting tested for COVID, staying in bed, staying home from work, calling in sick, model it for your children. Show them what you do when you’re sick to get better.
That doesn’t mean getting up and doing housework or chores or trying to conduct work from home when you’ve got a cough or a cold. When you can get the other parent to take over childcare so that you can really rest up the way you want your children to rest up when they’re ill.
Many young adults feel like they should plow through and be the wounded warrior at work. They take their germs to work and they feel like they’re powering through the day, but they’re doing the opposite of what their body really needs them to do.
That is to get in bed and rest and sleep. I can’t say enough about the restorative qualities of a good night’s sleep for a cold RSV flu or COVID.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
I don’t always practice that, Bob, I’m not going to.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
I know, I know. I think we doctors and nurses are worse. I think this wounded warrior from Greek mythology has followed us all the way. It’s sort of a badge we try to power through, but think about what we’re teaching our children.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
It’s true. Thanks so much for joining us today and sharing all of your wisdom with us. You were fantastic. Thank you so much.
Dr. Robert Jacobson:
You’re so very kind to have me in. As you know, I love talking about these things. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Angela Mattke:
If your kid has a routine case of RSV, make sure they get plenty of bed rest, hydrate, and use acetaminophen aka Tylenol as needed. For milder cases of RSV, you probably don’t need to see a doctor or get tested for it, but you should make sure it’s not COVID.
To prevent your kids from catching RSV and spreading it, work on teaching good hygiene at home. That includes not sharing cups and utensils, practicing good hand washing habits, and covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze.
In severe RSV cases where we need to treat kids in a hospital setting, we give them hydration through IV fluids and sometimes oxygenation, but we can also take steps to prevent RSV from getting to that point. Routine immunizations for babies now include a monoclonal antibody for RSV, which provides a longer lasting immunity.
There are also two vaccines for adults, and one of these can be given to pregnant people. If you’re pregnant or immunocompromised and wondering if you should get one of these immunizations, have a conversation with your doctor about your individual risk.
That’s all for RSV, but if your kid has something else going on or you have a topic suggestion, send us an email at mcppodcasts@mayo.edu or leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272, and we’ll see if we can help you out.
Please remember, this podcast cannot provide individual medical advice, and the discussion presented here cannot replace a one-on-one consultation with a medical professional. Plus, you get a sticker at the end! Ok. Thanks for listening!
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