4 things we've learned about Enterovirus D68, and 1 mystery

On Aug. 15, doctors and nurses at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., realized they had a problem. Children were coming into the emergency room with an illness that caused wheezing and breathing problems so severe that some children ended up in the ICU on ventilators. And it was spreading fast. "By Aug. 20, we were beyond our bed capacity," Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, chief of the infectious diseases section at Children's Mercy, said at the IDWeek meeting in Philadelphia. Since then, the virus that caused those illnesses, enterovirus D68, has sickened children across the country and may be responsible for the deaths of five children. Jackson and Dr. Aaron Milstone of Johns Hopkins Children's Centers briefed reporters on the outbreak Thursday morning.