WA’s hard border closures caused more young children to be hospitalised with common viruses like the cold or flu, than pre-pandemic, according to one of Perth’s top paediatricians.
University of Western Australia’s head of paediatrics, Professor Peter Richmond, says the state’s COVID lockdowns meant viruses like influenza and RSV weren’t circulating in the community, creating an immunity gap in young children.
“The restriction of transmission of viruses led to a deficit and development of natural immunity, so we then suddenly see these exposed children who have no immunity then getting sicker than they normally would,” he said.
Richmond said when the borders reopened, an epidemic of winter viruses saw a rise in the number of young children admitted to Perth Children’s Hospital with respiratory distress.
Many experienced a symptom known as viral induced wheeze – also diagnosed as bronchiolitis in babies under the age of 1 – both triggering airways to swell up and constrict breathing, similar to asthma.
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“Sometimes with those children, even giving them ventolin and other forms of therapies, they end up in intensive care, and sometimes on a ventilator. And occasionally, young children with viral induced respiratory infections can even die,” Richmond said.
Perth mum, Lisa Bentley-Taylor’s twin four-year-old boys Arie and Luca, born in 2020, both experienced bronchiolitis when they first started daycare at 12 months old, and have since required multiple hospitalisations every winter.
“Generally, it’s their oxygen levels that we struggle to get up and that’s what keeps them in there for such prolonged periods of time,” she said.
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