MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – A respiratory virus has seen hundreds of children hospitalized in the US, and it is feared the current numbers will increase followed by more severe cases, CNN reported on Monday.
“We’re in the middle of looking into this,” Mark Pallansch, a virologist and director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Viral Diseases, was quoted by CNN as saying. “We don’t have all the answers yet.”
Pallansch suggested the hospitalizations over the last couple of days could be “just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases.”
CNN reports that ten states, comprising Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, have already turned to the CDC for assistance in discovering more about the outbreak of the virus.
CNN said that so far more than 30 children a day have been hospitalized in Kansas City with the virus, of which 15 percent were taken into intensive care. CNN commented that in Kansas City alone, around 475 children have been treated for the virus at Children’s Mercy Hospital.
“It’s worse in terms of scope of critically ill children who require intensive care”, Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, the hospital’s division director for infectious diseases said to CNN. “I would call it unprecedented. I’ve practiced for 30 years in pediatrics, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
“We’ve had to mobilize other providers, doctors, nurses. It’s big”, Jackson continued.
According to CNN, there are no vaccines available against the enterovirus EV-D68 first identified in the 1960s. Since then, there have been fewer than 100 reported cases. Since then, the virus has been observed in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and various other countries including the Philippines, Japan and the Netherlands. The last time the virus was spotted in the United States before the current outbreak was last year. This year, it has been observed in different parts of the world as well.
An analysis carried out by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services claims that 30 children hospitalized in the Kansas City have already tested positive for EV-D68.
Although EV-D68 can cause death, no such cases have yet been reported.
