VANCOUVER -- The B.C. Centre for Disease Control has confirmed another child tested positive for enterovirus D68 in the province, bringing the total number of cases to nine.
CDC spokeswoman Danuta Skowronski says six of the patients are less than 10 years old, three of them are between 10 and 19 and seven of them are boys.
There has been a number of cases of EV-D68 in the United States and the illness is blamed for the death of a four-year-old boy in New Jersey on the weekend.
Skowronski says the centre is monitoring but so far there has been no spike in respiratory illness indicators in B.C., or any reports of clusters of severe respiratory illness in the province.
The patients are spread throughout the province, with four cases in the Fraser Valley health region, three in Vancouver Coastal and one each in the Interior and Northern health authority jurisdictions.
There have been dozens of confirmed cases of EV-D68 in Canada, which usually causes only mild cold symptoms but in a small number of infected children can cause polio-like symptoms.
