United States: Abby Parks who is a 27-year-old special education teacher from Springfield, Illinois, discovered that she had contracted parvovirus after experiencing severe flu-like symptoms and a rash while 18 weeks pregnant.
As reported by NBC news, Despite negative tests for Covid and strep, Parks suffered from a high fever for several days. Her condition was finally linked to parvovirus after the school nurse noticed similar symptoms in students, which led to the diagnosis
Critical Diagnosis and Treatment
When the blood tests has given by her OB-GYN came back positive for parvovirus B19 in early May, she was referred to a maternal fatal medicine specialist and the doctor discovered the virus that has passed to the fetus in utero and the fetus had developed anemia which is a very dangerous condition doctors gave the fetus a blood transfusion in utero.
CDC Issues Alert Amid Rising Cases
Reports of parvovirus B19 — popularly known as Fifth disease or ‘slapped cheek syndrome’ because of the rash with which infected patients are afflicted — are increasing in the U. S. On Tuesday, the CDC issued an alert to doctors to look out for symptoms of the extremely infectious winter virus.
The majority of the infections are from child between the age 5 to 9, according to the CDC. Since March, parvovirus has been identified to have been circulating in Europe to a higher capacity as compared to normal years as was established by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and control.
To date, most adults happen to have been infected as children and they are all protected. But the CDC released that pregnant people and people having sickle cell disease who had never been exposed are equally vulnerable to severe illness.
Ongoing Care for Parks and Her Baby
Parks’ doctor, Kathy Bligard, a Washington University OB-GYN at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said: “She is not the only patient that I have seen in the last few months, whose fetus has required a blood transfusion for parvovirus.
This is something that I used to encounter, about once every other year and I have encountered it multiple times in the last few months. ”
Bligard stated that parvovirus is fatal to pregnant women because it uses the placenta to go affect the fetus and make it anaemic leading to death of the fetus.
Parks has survived the virus, however, her pregnancy is still in a rather dangerous state.
Late Wednesday morning, an ultrasound revealed that the fetus was not getting adequate blood through the placenta, and Parks was admitted to a hospital in Springfield to manage the baby.
The transfusion she received earlier, she said, must have been “lifesaving for the fetus Because if that anemia had persisted – that low blood count – the baby could have died,” Parks said in a Wednesday interview from her hospital bed.