While most people -- children and adults alike -- recover from the virus after a week at home, often with no medication, researchers are struggling to make sense out of why this new flu can turn a healthy child severely ill.
My colleague Meredith Cohn offers this great explainer of how the virus behaves in children, particularly how it can attack their lungs, leaving them vulnerable to pneumonia and other infections.
The story examines the case of 2-year-old Jasmine Cadavid, who is being treated for pneumonia at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children for two weeks. Her frightened parents are still bewildered at their daughter's struggle. So are doctors.
Experts think elderly people may have been exposed to some form of the virus in the past, providing them at least some immunity. Children, on the other hand, appear to have none and this might hinder their ability to fight off secondary infections.
But that only explains part of the mystery, the story says.
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