It remains unclear why the novel coronavirus seems to hit health care workers harder than it does other sufferers, an expert said Monday.

“We know the high mortality in older people, but for reasons that we don’t understand front-line health care workers are at great risk for serious illness despite their younger age,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

“There’s nothing more destabilizing” than health care workers falling ill, he told CNN, and it will take time to determine what is making them sicker than other patients.
Hotez’s words came following a weekend in which the American College of Emergency Physicians said two doctors suffering from the coronavirus were in critical condition: a Washington physician in his 40s and a 70-year-old in Patterson, New Jersey.