NATCHEZ \u2014 Miss-Lou health care providers are seeing an increasing number of illnesses related to what is commonly considered cold and flu season.<\/p>\n
Temperatures in the Miss-Lou are swinging between very warm one day and severe cold the next, making it difficult to properly dress for the weather. During the cold weather, people are primarily indoors and in close proximity, providing perfect conditions for the spread of viruses and the like.<\/p>\n
“We are seeing lots of upper respiratory and lower respiratory illnesses, lots of runny noses, sinus infections, pneumonia, which comes from different organisms. We are seeing lots of flu, primarily influenza A, in both adults and children,” said Dr. Ben Yarbrough, medical director of the Merit Health Natchez emergency department.<\/p>\n
The pneumonia cases Yarbrough and others at the hospital are treating are primarily those community-acquired, he said, meaning they are spread through the atmosphere when people are around crowds.<\/p>\n
“In children 3 and 4 years of age and under, we are seeing cases of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. That’s a virus and not a bacteria, so that is usually treated with a short course of steroids and symptomatic treatments, like Tylenol,” Yarbrough said.<\/p>\n
RSV infects the nose, throat and lungs and can present like the flu, COVID or even the common cold.<\/p>\n
“It is very helpful for homes to have a cool mist vaporizer or a humidifier, particularly for asthmatics or children with sensitive airways,” Yarbrough said. “We are seeing some pretty significant cases of pneumonia in people who have illnesses like COPD, chronic asthma or other respiratory problems.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NATCHEZ \u2014 Miss-Lou health care providers are seeing an increasing number of illnesses related to what is commonly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500,16376],"class_list":{"0":"post-384556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-newsletter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}