17 to 38, have experienced respiratory illness after using e-cigarettes or vaping. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) is working with local health departments to investigate another 12 suspected cases, the agency said.
“The severity of illness people are experiencing is alarming and we must get the word out that using e-cigarettes and vaping can be dangerous,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of the IDPH said in a statement. “We requested a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help us investigate these cases as they arrived in Illinois.”
CDC officials updated its tally of such cases to 193, spread across 22 states. These cases have emerged in a relatively short timeframe – from June 28 through August 20, 2019, agency officials said during a media briefing.
No age group is immune: E-cigarette users ranging from teenagers to middle-aged adults are falling ill with respiratory symptoms that include coughing, shortness of breath and fatigue.
Some patients have had so much trouble breathing that they wound up on a ventilator in their hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU), said Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association.
“We do have to be careful [to say] that this has not been linked to