The HSE are seeing a significant rise in respiratory virus infections in children between 0 and 4, with the virus known to cause Bronchiolitis in young children.
While symptoms of bronchiolitis can be pretty mild, with a runny or blocked nose, mild fever and cough, it can cause serious breathing and feeding difficulties for babies and require hospitalisation. The HSE has sent all early learning and childcare service providers a set of guidelines in hopes to minimise the spread of winter viruses, and asked them to share these guidelines with parents.
Neither children nor staff should attend the service if they are unwell. While children usually might have a runny nose or a slight cough in winter, children with more significant symptoms or a combination of symptoms should stay at home until their symptoms are gone.
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If after the infection, the child has a persistent cough, they should not be excluded from childbecause of it, as long as they don’t have any other symptoms and feel otherwise fine.
While older children and adults might not feel particularly unwell with RSV, they might spread it to other staff, children and babies. Since babies could become very unwell if infected, interactions between infants and those with symptoms should be minimised.
“Many of the measures that we all got used to with Covid-19 are still important for the prevention and minimisation of onward spread of many infections,” the HSE says, adding that children and staff should maintain or be taught to maintain these measures (coughing or sneezing into their elbow, appropriate hand washing, etc). There is no vaccine available against RSV infection but the HSE recommend flu and Covid-19 vaccines since children are also at risk of many other respiratory infections
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