6 children dead, 12 sick in viral outbreak at rehab centre in US
A severe viral outbreak at a New Jersey rehabilitation centre for “medically fragile children” has left six youths dead and 12 others sick, the New Jersey Health Department said on Tuesday.
There have been 18 cases of adenovirus at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell, about 50kms northwest of New York, the department said in a statement.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an email that it is providing technical assistance to the state. In the past 10 years, cases of severe illness and death from the type of infection found at the facility have been reported in the United States, said CDC spokeswoman Kate Fowlie in an email, though it’s unclear how many deaths there have been.
The strain afflicting the children is usually associated with acute respiratory illness, according to the CDC.
The Health Department did not release the ages of the victims or address the severity of the illness in the other dozen cases. The six deaths happened this month, according to Health Department spokeswoman Donna Leusner.
The facility was instructed not to admit new patients until the outbreak ends.
Dr William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said these kinds of fatalities are not common, but they are known to happen. “Here I think you have this kind of nasty combination of very fragile children and this particularly aggressive virus,” he said.
The strain in the New Jersey outbreak is type seven and is affecting “medically fragile” children with severely compromised immune systems, according to the Health Department. It has been associated with communal living and can be more severe.
In New Jersey, a team was at the centre on Tuesday and Sunday and found “minor handwashing deficiencies”.
Governor Phil Murphy said in a statement that he was “heartbroken” about the deaths and that he had been briefed by the health commissioner, Dr Shereef Elnahal, who told him that the department is trying to prevent the virus from spreading further.
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