Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common germ that can infect the nose, throat, lungs, and breathing passages.
For most healthy children and adults, RSV can result in mild, cold-like symptoms. But RSV can be serious and even life-threatening to babies, seniors, and people with weakened immune systems or underlying lung or heart disease.
Though many people have never heard of this virus, “RSV is so common that pretty much everyone gets it by the time they are 2 years old,” says Denise McCulloch, MD, MPH, an infectious disease physician-scientist at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
RSV circulates in most parts of the country from November to April — the so-called “RSV season” — and typically peaks in January and February. But the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 upended RSV’s usual pattern.
Measures like mask mandates and social distancing, designed to prevent COVID-19 transmission, also kept RSV levels low during the early years of the pandemic. But once large numbers of people began gathering mask-free again, RSV came back strong.
The 2022–2023 winter RSV season in the United States kicked off unusually early, in October, with numerous outbreaks among children that strained hospitals. An abnormally high number of seniors contracted RSV as well.
While infectious disease experts anticipate that RSV will eventually return to its typical late fall–winter pattern, it may continue to be off-kilter for a while. “At this point, we really need to be on the lookout for RSV at any time of year,” says Marian Michaels, MD, MPH, a professor in the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
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