2 more kids ill with deadly virus

Outbreak at New Jersey medical facility has killed 10 in 2 months

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Two more children at a Wanaque medical facility were diagnosed over the weekend with adenovirus, which has killed 10 medically fragile children at the facility since the outbreak began in late September, health officials reported.

The two children bring the total number of pediatric cases at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation to 33.

That news is especially concerning to a mother of an 18-year-old who is recovering from the virus at a nearby hospital and is scheduled to return to the center this week. She is afraid her daughter will get sick again.

“I don’t want her to go back, but it’s the only facility that’s available,” the mother said Monday morning.

The mother, who lives in New York City and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her family’s privacy, has been at her daughter’s bedside at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in Paterson for a week.

“If I could take her back home with me, I would,” she said. “She’s medically stable. She got though this. But now she has to go back.”

The Health Department won’t divulge how many sickened children are still at the Wanaque Center and how many have been taken to hospitals. But the two new cases confirm that the virus is still spreading among residents of the facility’s ventilator unit.