# 4030
Last week in a blog entitled When The `Flu’ Isn’t The Flu, I wrote about a discovery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia of an unusually virulent (and possibly new) rhinovirus – essentially a common cold – that began hitting some children hard earlier this fall.
Even during the height of flu season, we know that other respiratory viruses are circulating, and probably making up half or more of all influenza-like-illnesses (ILIs).
These illnesses may range from common rhinoviruses to metapneumovirus, parainfluenzavirus, or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), to one of the adenoviruses.
This chart (see ILI’s Aren’t Always The Flu) from early October show more than 70% of samples tested by the CDC came back negative for influenza.
Now Maggie Fox, Health and Science editor for Reuters, picks up the story with some more details. Maggie always does terrific reporting, so follow the link to read it in its entirety.
Not just swine flu - new cold virus may lurk, too
Tue Nov 17, 2009 3:24pm EST
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Runny nose, fever, cough, even pneumonia -- the symptoms sound like swine flu but children hospitalized at one U.S. hospital in fact had a rhinovirus, better known as a common cold virus, doctors said on Tuesday.
Hundreds of children treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia had a rhinovirus, and federal health investigators are trying to find out if it was a new strain, and if this is going on elsewhere in the country.
“What began to happen in early September is we started seeing more children coming to our emergency room with significant respiratory illness," said Dr. Susan Coffin, medical director of infection control and prevention at the hospital.
Doctors and parents assumed it was the new pandemic H1N1 swine flu, which would be expected to re-emerge as schools began in September. But it was not, Coffin said in a telephone interview.
