We’re less than a week away from the Fourth of July, the heart of summer. But kids are still getting the kinds of sniffles and sneezes that you would often see during the heart of cold and flu season.
And it’s not just metro Detroit; it's a phenomenon happening across the country. It’s tied to COVID-19. Some say the pandemic has led to weakened immune systems in kids.
Mike Sherman says his granddaughter caught COVID and it was a frightening experience.
"Very scary because you don't know if it's serious, especially when they didn't have their shots," said Sherman.
Thankfully she recovered completely. But now that we are all shifting to a less intense phase of the pandemic, more kids are showing up at the pediatrician's office with coughs, sniffles and fevers.
Dr. Marcus DeGraw, Chief of Pediatrics at Ascension St. John Children’s Hospital, said, "we do have parents coming in wondering why all of a sudden in the last few months, the kids have been getting more sick than they're used to."
Dr. DeGraw said masking, stay-at-home orders and remote schooling meant children missed a lot of regular day-to-day interaction with peers and exposure to common viruses and bacteria.
"Which creates gaps in our immune system's memory, making it less effective when we are then re-exposed to those same infections in the future," he said.
And in some cases, those young immune systems are learning to fight viruses for the first time, but that doesn't mean the immune systems of our kids are weaker, just less experienced. And while kids may be getting sick more frequently post COVID, they are just being exposed to the same viruses and bugs they would have been exposed to were it not for the pandemic. They're really just catching up with no long term consequences.
"They're going to get it now or they're going to get it when they're four or five and they start in school. And so there's really not much difference," he said.
But some viruses are behaving in new and peculiar ways. The common cold, influenza and RSV are all in play well after the traditional cold and flu season.
"We're seeing RSV and influenza act weird and show themselves in a different seasonality than we're used to. And that's cause for attention," he said.
But not concern. Dr. DeGraw says overall upper respiratory cases are still lower than normal years and is slightly less as well. Even so, Sherman says his daughter and everyone in the family are watchful knowing that with more interaction comes a greater chance for sickness.
"You're always concerned about whether or not all the kids are carrying some type of flu or influenza or perhaps a cold," said Sherman.
Dr. DeGraw said kids throughout a year average about one or two upper respiratory infections a month.
That's just an average child. And that number increases if they're in daycare or they're in school or they live in households with multiple kids.
And whether it’s one or more than one virus, for most kids it’s not a big deal. We’re just a little more sensitive after COVID.
