Child Respiratory Virus prompts CDC to Issue Nationwide Alert

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has asked health care providers of the country to look out for an increase in respiratory illness among children. The CDC alert comes in the wake of an outbreak of a rare respiratory illness, which has sent hundreds of children to hospitals in Chicago and Kansas City.

The CDC is also carrying out tests to find out whether the  enterovirus D68 is active in about 10 other states, reports mcclatchydc.com.

"We believe the unusual increases in Kansas City and Chicago may be occurring elsewhere over the weeks ahead and we want people to be on the lookout," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The D68 strain of the enterovirus is less common than other enterovirus types. However, it has greater chances of causing respiratory problems. This may even require artificial ventilation in severe cases.

More than 300 patients with respiratory illness were treated at the Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

When the CDC tested 22 children who got treatment at the Children's Mercy hospital, it found that 19 had enterovirus D68. The age of the children ranged between 6 weeks to 16 years, reports mcclatchydc.com.

While thirteen of the children had histories of asthma or wheezing, five children had high fever. Four of them had to be given artificial ventilation to help them breathe.

The virus was also found in 11 of 14 youngsters from the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital when the CDC conducted tests.

However no deaths or cases involving adults have so far been reported.

Beside Missouri and Illinois, the CDC is investigating suspected cases of EV-D68 in Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said that parents of children with respiratory diseases like asthma, cystic fibrosis, and other breathing disorders should be alert about cold symptoms in their child. He said that they should  see  a physician without delay if their child experienced fever, shortness of breath, wheezing, or worsening of asthma symptoms," reports NBC News.

He also cautioned the parents not to wait for the child to recover from it by itself.

Meanwhile, the respiratory illness is sending hundreds of children to hospitals in Colorado. Doctors at the Children's hospital in Colorado have treated more than 900 children with symptoms of the virus in the period between August 18 and September 4, according to hospital officials.