Ottawa: Hospitals with children are full due to the presence of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in young children, and in such a situation, doctors are worried that the number of elderly people will be among the next most affected by this virus.
Dr Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health and University Health Network in Toronto, said the focus right now is on Children’s hospitals. All this could happen to our elders in the times to come. Infectious disease experts have predicted a more dangerous RSV and flu season than usual.
Not only children but the elderly can also fall prey to serious illness due to excessive circulating of RSV. Dr. Sinha said that at what time this respiratory disease will spread from children to the elderly cannot be estimated. He said data on patients admitted to hospitals due to RSV in terms of age is also available in limited quantities. Doctors are already worried about the increasing number of adults being hospitalised due to RSV.
Data on people hospitalized due to RSV by the Public Health Agency of Canada has not been collected by age, a statement said.
Meanwhile, Health Canada issued a statement on Thursday saying that on October 25, GSK introduced the RSV vaccine for people over the age of 60.
In addition, Pfizer has also said that it will submit two rsv vaccines to Health Canada for testing soon. One of these vaccines will be for the elderly and the other for pregnant women.
Over 14,000 deaths in Canada in 2018 were associated with resistant infections. Of these, 5,400 deaths were directly attributable to AMR. In 2018, AMR cost the Canadian healthcare system about $1.4 billion and reduced Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) by an estimated $2 billion, the Health Canada said.