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HACKENSACK — Two more children at a Wanaque medical facility were diagnosed over the weekend with adenovirus, which has killed 10 medically fragile children at the facility since the outbreak began in late September, health officials reported.
The two children bring the total number of pediatric cases at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation to 33.
The Health Department won’t divulge how many sickened children are still at the Wanaque Center and how many have been taken to hospitals. But the two new cases confirm that the virus is still spreading among residents of the facility’s ventilator unit.
Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the state health commissioner, has been reluctant to move recovering residents to other facilities fearing they could possibly spread the virus to another facility. Complicating things further: there are only four pediatric nursing homes in New Jersey. Wanaque and another facility in Voorhees have adenovirus outbreaks, and the other two are at capacity with significant waiting lists.
An outbreak is considered over when two consecutive two-week incubation periods have passed. If no new cases are identified, the outbreak will be deemed over in the second full week of December.
Meanwhile, health officials reported that another child was sickened with a milder form of adenovirus at a long-term care facility in Vorhees. That brings the total number of cases to eight at that facility. No one has died there.
©2018 The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): adenovirus
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