Doctors, medical experts warning about spike in Flu, COVID-19 cases
There are so many sick kids being admitted to Children's Hospital of Orange County that doctors there are starting to sound the alarm to parents.
Cases of the influenza virus (flu) and COVID-19 are going up. On Monday, 418 patients checked into the CHOC emergency department, a record number of patients for the hospital.
"So many patients everywhere we've never seen anything like this," Vice President of Patient Care at CHOC Dr. Melanie Patterson told CBSLA Orange County Michele Gile. "In fact I started at CHOC 35 years ago, I've not seen so many patients even during our busiest times during the winter."
CHOC nurses told Gile that the majority of these young patients are battling the flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID.
Two-year-old Anthony Vasquez left CHOC this afternoon after being checked out for pneumonia. His parents took him to the hospital after his cough continued to get worse.
"It's a high cough. Like I wouldn't say a smokers cough. It's like a cough that just keeps going and going and wouldn't stop," Alfredo Vasquez, Anthony's father said.
Flu cases are clearly on the rise and this flu season is expected to be a bad one this time around. There weren't any last year at CHOC but already this season the hospital has treated 120 patients with the flu.
"There wasn't any flu last year," Dr. Jim Keany said. "All the kids have gone back to school. We have COVID now. We have the flu. They didn't have RSV last year either and so some of those kids they didn't get the immunity they normally get in school with RSV and flu and now we're seeing that."
Keany works at the emergency services department at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo and he told Gile that it generally takes a few weeks for immunity to build up after getting a flu shot.
Therefore he believes now is the time to get the flu vaccine.
"The whole health system right now is just frazzled," Keany said. "Recovering from COVID, nursing shortages and so we all are ready for the next the next big battle."