We knew this day would come. School is back in session, there’s a chill in the air and everywhere you go you hear the sounds of the season: sniffling, sneezing and coughing.After two years of a global pandemic of a respiratory virus, these sounds might feel extra spooky. If you’re a parent of a newborn, they are definitely scary. Especially with rates of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, on the rise.RSV is normally an unexceptional infection that affects the lower respiratory tract and causes bronchiolitis and pneumonia. For most of us, RSV causes the run-of-the-mill cold. It’s so common that nearly everyone has had RSV by age 2. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), each year RSV accounts for 58,000 hospitalizations in children younger than 5 in the United States. Globally, recent estimates have suggested that more than 100,000 children die from RSV each year.
Source: RSV: Scary season for parents of young children | Pediatric research