"It's a disease which can change very quickly," says Mejías, who works at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. "I've always told my colleagues that for every two children that are admitted, one can go to the ICU in the next three hours and the other one may go home the next day. It's totally unpredictable."
"Eighty percent of children that end up in the hospital with RSV seem totally healthy," Mejías says. "They were born full term, and don't have any risk factors for severe disease."
The problem is, aside from a few known risk factors such as premature birth and preexisting lung conditions, it's hard to tell which children will be worst affected. RSV is responsible for more than 100,000 infant deaths globally every year, nearly half of which are in babies under 6 months of age.
Around the world, different research groups are attempting to train machine learning algorithms or develop statistical models that can indicate which children are most vulnerable to RSV.
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