BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Kids across Western New York are back to school this week, so we're taking your questions to local doctors as the year kicks off.
7 News anchor Katie Morse spoke with Dr. Steve Turkovich from Oishei Children's Hospital, and asked him questions from local parents.
TOPIC 1: COVID in classrooms
Q: As we head back to school and kids go back to the classroom - what are you expecting to see in terms of COVID this school year?
A: The crystal ball with COVID has been cloudy at best as we've gone through the pandemic. What we can expect is likely what we've seen with other respiratory illnesses. As we go back inside, there's less access to fresh air, we'll start to see it circulating more. The big unknown is what's going to happen in terms of variants. Are we going to see a variant that's more severe or more contagious? We don't know. We have certainly seen the trend become more contagious but less severe. If it's going to mutate hopefully that's the case.
TOPIC 2: What about other diseases?
Q: What do you expect to see in terms of RSV and flu?
A: We've seen the return of things like RSV. We started to see the return of flu last year, but that was in the context of masking. So with really no masking, I would expect the flu to come back the typical flu season, I would expect RSV to come back to a typical RSV season, and I would expect COVID to be around as well.
TOPIC 3: Mental Health in schools
Q: As a parent, what do I need to know about talking to my child about mental health and approaching that as the start of the school year comes?
A: I always tell parents to be as proactive as possible. Have an ongoing conversation - how you doing? How you feeling? Ask them to describe their feelings. You don't want to have those conversations when you first start to see problems. You want to have those discussions around the emotional aspects of school and the mental aspects of school on a daily basis.
