Spike in New York children with virus-linked illness
Amber Dean had recovered from a mild bout of the coronavirus and her family of five had just ended their home quarantine when her oldest son, 9-year-old Bobby, fell ill.
“At first it was nothing major, it seemed like a tummy bug, like he ate something that didn’t agree with him,” said Dean, who lives with her husband and three young children in the western New York town of Hornell. “But by the next day, he couldn’t keep anything down and his belly hurt so bad he couldn’t sit up.”
At the local hospital emergency room, doctors suspected an appendix infection and sent him home with instructions to see his pediatrician.
It was only later, after Bobby’s condition took an alarming turn for the worse, that doctors realised he was among the small but growing number of children with a mysterious inflammatory syndrome thought to be related to the virus.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday that New York was now investigating about 100 cases of the syndrome, which affects blood vessels and organs and has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock. Three children in the state have died and Cuomo advised all hospitals to prioritise Covid-19 testing for children presenting with symptoms.
In New York City, which has reported at least 52 children sick with the syndrome, Mayor Bill de Blasio yesterday urged parents to call their pediatricians promptly if their children show symptoms including persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain and vomiting.
Children elsewhere in the US and in Europe have also been hospitalised with the condition known as pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome. In New York, the syndrome has been found across a wide range of young people. A 5-year-old boy, 7-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman have died.
“This is a truly disturbing situation and I know parents around the state and parents around the country are very concerned about this, and they should be,” Cuomo said.
“If we have this issue in New York it’s probably in other states.”
Dr Juan Salazar, the physician-in-chief at Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre, said two patients there were believed to have the rare condition, which he said often appeared to present itself two to four weeks after a child had recovered from Covid-19, often without ever being diagnosed with the infection. Yale Health said it was treating three children believed to have the syndrome.
Cuomo announced last week that New York was developing national criteria for identifying and responding to the syndrome at the request of the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.