More kids are getting sick, and a Broward hospital just opened overflow ICU beds

Broward Health is putting out an urgent warning for South Florida as respiratory viruses are on the rise.

This past weekend, the Salah Foundation Children’s Hospital at Broward Health said its pediatric intensive care unit was overwhelmed with cases.

“What we’re seeing here is that patients are progressing to a level that requires great care,” said Dr. Hector Rodriguez-Cortes, chief of the pediatric department. “For us, we call it common cold symptoms but it’s called a respiratory syncytial virus.”

RSV is believed to be the contributing factor behind why all 12 of the hospital’s PICUs were filled, forcing staff to use overflow units.

“We’re just supportive care when they come in with these viruses, if they need oxygen, Motrin, Tylenol, just keep them comfortable, support their respiratory symptoms as they happen, just help them get through the virus,” Laurie Garcia, PICU Interim Nurse Manager told CBS Miami.

Broward Health estimates over 70% of pediatric patients were diagnosed with some kind of respiratory issue over the weekend. Doctors with Kidz Medical Services are also seeing it in their offices.

“They can also have a lot of inflammation so a lot of mucus, also in the lungs, so when they go into the lungs, some of them, they cannot breathe very well, so we see little babies can do worse than others, so RSV changes a lot,” said Dr. Maria Franco, a pediatric pulmonologist.

This comes at a time other states are also seeing an increase. The latest report from the Florida Deptartment of Health from the last two weeks of September shows that RSV activity in children 5 and under was notably above levels observed at this time in other years.

Dr. Rodriguez-Cortes said several factors can push cases up, and masks may have kept cases at bay during the last two pandemic years.

“Now that slowly the community is back to normal, I think this is what was protecting us,” he said.

Symptoms include runny nose, decrease in appetite, coughing, sneezing, fever, wheezing.

Children with underlying health issues may have more severe cases.

“We’re doing this not to alarm the community just to give you a heads up that this is going and you need to be prepared,” he added.

RSV is also considered very contagious, but typically older children and adults will see symptoms go away in one to two weeks.

This report is from Miami Herald news partner CBS Miami.