A mother who rushed her son to hospital with a serious Covid-like virus has warned the current strain of ‘RSV’ is spreading through Queensland day-care centres.
Chloé Siler noticed her three-month-old little boy Marcelo Pitt had developed a small cough but put it down to sleeping with the air conditioning on at night.
But on Thursday, after she noticed her little boy seemed drowsy, she rushed him to Toowoomba Hospital where he was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and bronchitis.
‘I noticed he was really drowsy and hadn’t really wanted to drink his milk,’ Ms Siler told Daily Mail Australia.
‘I was really hoping he wasn’t going to end up in hospital with a bad case of it but he did unfortunately.
Chloé Siler rushed her almost four-month-old son Marcelo Pitt (pictured together) to hospital last Thursday when he rapidly deteriorated after having a seemingly-minor cough
‘He then got worse very quickly. His eyes went puffy from being so over tired, started wheezing when breathing, runny nose and blocked nose, constant crying and being unsettled. He was in hospital for two night and three days.’
Marcelo caught RSV from his older brother who picked up the illness the week before from his local day centre.
During the early stages of RSV, sufferers symptoms – such as a runny nose, cough, and fever – can be mistaken for a common cold.
But the coughing worsens over the next few days, turning into a wheeze or bark that could be a sign of bronchitis.
Due to severe dehydration, Marcelo had to be hydrated through tubes going into his nose.
Ms Siler said the hospital described it as a ‘plague’ going around Toowoomba and has warned parents to remain vigilant and monitor for symptoms.
Although the virus is not uncommon, south-east Queensland has joined Victoria in recording a dramatic, early-season spike in cases of RSV among infants and children.
Marcelo was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and bronchitis and was hospitalised for three days
There is speculation that increased social distancing during the Covid pandemic has reduced the community’s collective immunity to the virus, sparking the boom.
Vanessa and Mark Richards from Warwick in regional Queensland watched helplessly as their son Emmett fought for his life and was airlifted by RACQ Lifeflight to a private hospital in Toowoomba in early March after the child was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
The emergency department at Warwick initially thought Emmett was suffering from asthma and then pneumonia.
The family was sent home twice where Emmett’s condition worsened as he struggled to breathe and became ‘like jelly in my arms’, said Ms Richards.
On a third visit to the hospital, after a test for COVID-19 and other respiratory ailments, it was discovered Emmett had RSV.
‘They took one look at him and put him in the resuscitation bay and he went downhill quite quickly then,’ said Ms Richards.
‘He became too unwell for their capacity [at Warwick].
Vanessa Richards cradled her son Emmett as they began the airlift out of Warwick
‘By the time he was transferred in the chopper he was on a ventilator. We were met on the ground by paramedics and then a specialist doctor in the ambulance into St Vincent’s, Toowoomba.
‘That Lifeflight team were critical to him surviving,’ she said.
Emmett was treated with high-flow oxygen at St Vincent’s and slowly began to improve after three days.
‘If we knew there were sick kids around him [in Warwick] we would have made some different decisions around childcare and work to limit his exposure, but we didn’t know this virus was on the rise at the moment,’ Ms Richards said.
The RSV outbreak in South-east Queensland follows a similar spike in Victoria.
The virus, which is more common in the winter months, mirrors the symptoms of COVID-19 by initially causing a runny nose, cough, fever and sore throat.
In February Queensland Children’s Hospital reported a 55 per cent spike in respiratory cases, including RSV, on top of a 45 per cent increase in January.
Emmett in recovery at St Vincent’s with a toy replica of the chopper that saved him
While RSV can also infect adults, 510 of the 563 people admitted to Queensland hospitals with the virus between November 2020 and January 2021 were aged under 18.
This figure represented a doubling of the number of young people with the virus when compared with the corresponding period last year.
Some medical experts believe social distancing measures made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic last year had increased the likelihood and severity of RSV in children.
‘We’ve now got a larger population that has been immune to RSV, that haven’t seen RSV before – so the general population’s immunity level is quite low,’ infectious diseases expert Dr Hannah Moore told the ABC.
Ms Richards said she took lots of photos in the hospitals at both Warwick and Toowoomba ‘in case they were the last pictures we had of him’.
‘We went through five years of IVF to have him so we’re just so grateful he’s now doing ok,’ she said. ‘If we had have known RSV was so severe and on the rise we would’ve made different decisions.’
