United States: Health officials have said that increasing numbers of individuals in the US have caught a highly contagious respiratory virus that is seasonal and dangerous to pregnant women and people with blood disorders.
More about the news
It is a respiratory illness from which droplets isolated from normal infected persons and patients with symptoms spread the parvovirus B19.
Although no definitive medical proof is available, the virus is peaking this summer; the US’s Centre for Disease Control epidemiology declared blood plasma samples and hearsay Tuesday by addressing a wide notice to healthcare professionals, organizations, and society, as the USA Today reported.
What has the CDC stated?
In its alert, CDC officials said the percentage of those who tested positive for the antibodies that show recent viral infection raised across ages from less than 3 percent with immunity if exposed in 2022 to early 2024 to 10 percent in June.
It has been highest among the children between 5 and 9 years of age. In plasma donors, the samples pointed to the incidence of the virus DNA rose from 1.5 percent in December to 19.9 percent in June.
However, the CDC said that pregnant women and those with sickle cell disease are experiencing more complications than before. As per the CDC’s alert, more than a dozen European countries reported “unusually high numbers of cases” of parvovirus B19 in Q1 of 2024.
More about Parvovirus B19
Parvovirus B19 is an agent that can easily spread. The CDC said the rate of infection is as high as the possibility of half the people who are subject to exposure in a particular household getting infected, as USA Today reported.
Moreover, comparable figures are perhaps observed in students and teachers in schools during the episodes. However, for most of those who are infected, the course of the disease is relatively non-serious.
Others include fever, headache, and cough, as well as sore throat, according to the CDC. Some of the symptoms can be fever or flu-like symptoms, followed by a reddish ‘slapped check’ rash in children a few days later.
People start experiencing joint pain and inflammation, the symptoms of which may last one to three weeks.