TORONTO - Dr. Noah Ivers remembers thinking his infant son just had a cold. But then, he was “clearly struggling to breathe” and had to be rushed to the hospital.
His son had respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — a common illness with often mild symptoms in children and adults. But for infants and seniors, RSV is a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections that can land them in hospital. Despite his medical knowledge, Ivers said seeing his baby with an oxygen mask left him feeling “unempowered.
” “The most you could do in that moment was hug them and hope,” said Ivers, who is both a primary care physician and a scientist at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. That happened about nine years ago, he said, noting there’s no antiviral treatment for RSV — so shielding infants from serious illness in the first place is key. But until this year, babies across Canada were only given an antibody drug that protects against severe RSV if they were born prematurely or had other significant risk factors.
For years, that antibody was palivizumab, which had to be given every month throughout the RSV season to maintain immunity. This fall and winter, Ontario, Quebec and Nunavut will offer the newer monoclonal antibody nirsevimab — approved by Health Canada in the spring of 2023 — to all babies going through their first RSV season. Unlike palivizumab, only one dose of nirsevimab is needed to provide protection throughout the fall and winter, when RSV is.
