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.
The hospital, unlike most hospitals in the United States, runs a test that can diagnose 10 different respiratory viruses, including influenza but also rhinoviruses, parainfluenza viruses and other germs that make kids sick.
"The data showed us it wasn't H1N1 but instead was this rhinovirus infection," Coffin said.
The CDC says while swine flu is above epidemic levels, only 30 percent of cases of so-called influenza-like illness that are tested actually turn out to be H1N1.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5AG52F20091117?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&rpc=69Only 30 percent turn out to be H1N1?! I thought we were going under the assumption that pretty much all the flus were swine flu at this time.