Enterovirus D68 claimed its youngest fatality last month when a young boy from Hamilton Township, New Jersey died in his sleep from the virus. The Virus has now spread to over 43 states in America and doctors are having a hard time containing its spread.
Enterovirus D63 or EV-D68 is a respiratory virus that reemerged in the United States this year. The disease has put hundreds of children in hospital and is quickly spreading to infect others. The disease can be particularly hard hitting, with patients having excessive coughs and difficulty in breathing. The symptoms of the virus are hard to decipher as they are so much like those of any other disease. The recorded symptoms include wheezing, difficulty when breathing, coughing and a running nose. In more severe asthmatic cases, the symptoms may worsen.
In Colorado, CDC and in the local health departments, officials are still trying to determine whether limb weakness and paralysis reported previously in nine children were associated with the enterovirus virus.
For the four year old Eli Waller from Hamilton, pink eye was the only noticeable symptom of the virus when he passed away. The child went to bed with pink eye and never woke up.
Waller was the smallest and lightest of three triplets. His siblings were perfectly healthy. He had trouble keeping up with them and even took more time to have some of the more simple tasks completed.
The day he passed away, his mother kept him away from school as he was developing a pink eye, said Jeff Plunkett, a health officer from Hamilton Township.
"Between the time his mom put him to bed Wednesday night and when she went to wake him up on Thursday morning, he passed," Plunkett said in an interview. "He had no other symptoms whatsoever."
The enterovirus disease can be prevented by common acts o hygiene such as regularly washing your hands and covering your coughs.
