Virus that can cause severe illness in babies seen in multiple states, CDC cautions

Health care suppliers in multiple states have reported a virus that can cause seizures, meningitis and different severe sicknesses in infants below 3 months outdated, federal officers stated Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alert notifying docs and public well being departments that instances of parechovirus have been seen in newborns and younger infants since May.

The alert does not say which states have seen infections in younger kids or what number of instances have been reported.

The advisory notes that as a result of there isn’t any systematic surveillance for parechovirus it is not clear how the variety of instances compares to earlier seasons. But elevated testing in current years may account for a better variety of instances, the company stated.

Every optimistic case recorded by the company has concerned PeV-A3, the kind of parechovirus that most frequently causes severe illness, the CDC stated.

The virus, a typical childhood pathogen thatcirculates in the summer time and fall and spreads by way of sneezing, coughing, saliva and feces, causes much less severe illness in kids older than 6 months, the company stated. Symptoms embrace a rash, an higher respiratory tract an infection and fever.

Experts who’ve examined the spinal fluid of babies with severe parechovirus infections have discovered that their white blood cells have vanished or practically disappeared.

There isn’t any remedy for the virus.

The alert encourages docs to check for the virus and to maintain infants hospitalized with infections collectively to keep away from spreading the illness to nurseries or neonatal intensive care models.