Tag: Respiratory Illness

Department of Health launches new Respiratory Illness Data Dashboard, retires COVID-19 Data Dashboard

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) created a new Respiratory Illness Data Dashboard that allows people to track COVID-19, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) disease activity by region across the state.  

The new, comprehensive dashboard replaces DOH’s COVID-19 Data Dashboard, which retired Sept. 18. COVID-19 data and reports can now be found on the new dashboard site.  

“We hope the new Respiratory Illness Data Dashboard will inform communities and help guide their personal decision making on prevention measures such as masks and social distancing,” said Tao Sheng Kwan-Gett, MD, MPH, Chief Science Officer at DOH. “Getting up to date on vaccinations and staying home when you’re sick can also help protect you and those around you against the worst impacts of COVID-19, flu, and RSV. We all need to do our part to reduce the chance that our healthcare system could be overwhelmed by respiratory illnesses in the coming months.”  

One major change in the new dashboard is the inclusion of data from previous years, providing the public with clearer comparisons between current disease activity and that of years past. The Respiratory Illness Data Dashboard will be updated weekly through April 2024. Subsequent update frequency depends on the degree of ongoing activity for COVID-19.  

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Inside a Children’s Hospital: Struggling to Cope With a Surge of Respiratory Illness

Waiting for their turn in the emergency room, dazed-looking parents in winter coats bounced crying children in their arms, trying to catch the eye of Dr. Erica Michiels. Us! Pick us next! they seemed to plead with tired eyes.

Michiels directs pediatric emergency medicine at Corewell Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Lips pressed together in a thin line, she surveyed what she calls the “disaster” area.

“People have been out here waiting for a couple hours, which is heartbreaking,” she said.

Typically, the ER at DeVos Children’s sees about 140 kids each day, according to Michiels, but on a recent Tuesday in early December, they saw 253.

“I hate when we have a wait,” sighed Michiels. “But for right now, we can’t do it any other way.”

Like many other children’s hospitals across the nation, the capacity of the staff at DeVos Children’s has been stretched by waves of patients with RSV and, increasingly, the flu.

This surge of sick kids is coming after years of some U.S. hospitals cutting back on pediatric beds — in part because it is typically more profitable to treat adult patients. The remaining pediatric beds are increasingly concentrated in urban areas, leaving families in rural areas to travel longer distances to get care for their children.

When Staci Rodriguez brought her 9-month-old son into the ER in their hometown of Shelby Township, Michigan, she was desperate. Santiago Botello Rodriguez, who has big brown eyes and long eyelashes that everybody gushes over, had been sick for days. First Santi stopped eating, so she took him to urgent care, she said. Then he started sleeping 20 hours a day, so Rodriguez went to the pediatrician. She said she was sent home, after being told Santi was just fighting a virus.

Read the full article from KHN.

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