SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - We’re still in the respiratory illness season and in this Avera Medical Minute, we wanted to get a pulse check on what people need to be concerned about regarding a variety of viruses going around.
Family physician Dr. Chad Thury with Avera Health joins Sam Wright in this Avera Medical Minute Q & A.
Sam: I wanted to start with new information regarding COVID-19. The CDC just relaxed the quarantine guidelines after a positive test, what are those new guidelines?
Dr. Thury: “Well, it sounds like they’re going to release another plan. That’ll happen sometime, it looks like, here in the next month or so. Really, we know these viruses change and the impact on our health changes over time and as we continue to be exposed to them and vaccinations are available and stuff. One of the statistics that I looked at is that when they surveillance sewers and stuff or the virus particles and stuff, it’s still about the same, but our hospitalizations are down about 20% compared to last year. So, it just continues to tell you that for a lot of the population, the impact on our health from COVID is continuing to go down. That kind of severity of the illness in general continues to go down. I think it’s just adjusting to that. I think the other part of it too is a lot of people are not even following the guidelines that are out there right now in the community, which is to isolate for those five days. So, I think it’s just moving in line with RSV and influenza and trying to mirror those. So, it’s kind of standardized and then, realizing the facts of what’s really going on and the decrease in severity of illness that we’re seeing.”
Sam: The RSV Vaccine was approved late last fall, is that something that is available for anyone?
Dr. Thury: “Yeah, the RSV vaccination is available. There’s kind of two populations there. We know that RSV really impacts those young kids, infants in particular. So, that’s the age group that we want to target is those newborn babies within the first season of RSV. The other population is people over 60, especially people over 60 that have chronic medical problems that maybe impact their immune system or they have underlying significant asthma, COPD, kind of respiratory conditions that can affect breathing because we know people over age 60 that have those conditions are also at high-risk for hospitalizations when it comes to RSV.”
Sam: There’s a growing concern about measles breaking out in different parts of the United States. Why is this happening and what should people do?
Dr. Thury: “I think on the list of priorities to be concerned about, there are certainly influenza, RSV and COVID. Measles seems to pop its head up every once in a while. We generally see it in populations that are under immunized for measles and that’s where it kind of works its way in. Oftentimes, it’s people that travel to another country around the world that maybe has higher levels of endemic measles and then bring it back and it spreads in that fashion.”
For more information, visit avera.org/medicalminute.
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