Two Chicago-area hospitals have implemented visitor restrictions in the wake of a respiratory virus infecting children across the Midwest.
Advocate Children's Hospitals in Park Ridge and Oak Lawn on Tuesday afternoon began turning away visitors under 18 years old within in-patient areas as a precaution until further notice.
Illinois is one of several states with confirmed cases of the uncommon virus, Enterovirus D68, and both Chicago and state health departments have been mobilized.
Experts say they still have a lot to learn about this particularly aggressive strain of the enterovirus.
"This is a relatively unusual enterovirus," said Dr. Stephanie Black, medical director of the communicable disease program of the Chicago Department of Public Health. "We don't know a lot about it, so I can't give you numbers, like what percent of kids who get Enterovirus D68 will develop sever respiratory disease."
The Chicago Department of Public Health says every school in Chicago is getting a fact sheet about the virus, and doctors are warning parents to be especially alert to breathing problems.
"If they develop symptoms like wheezing, uncontrollable coughing, shortness of breath, blue lips of course, [it] needs to be evaluated urgently," Black said.
The city and state are funneling specimens from the sickest patients in pediatric ICUs to the Centers for Disease Control.
With no anti-virals and no vaccine, messages that are shared so often we barely hear them suddenly have a new urgency.
"It's really more important than ever that people wash their hands and stay home when they're sick," Black said.
