A small but rising number of children are becoming ill with a rare syndrome that could be linked to the coronavirus. Reported cases shows symptoms of abdominal pain, gastrointestinal symptoms and cardiac inflammation, U.K. health care bosses and pediatrics specialists have warned.
What We Know:
- On Sunday, the Paediatric Intensive Care Society U.K. tweeted an “urgent alert” from the National Health Service England about a small rise in the number of cases of critically ill children presenting “overlapping features of toxic shock syndrome and atypical Kawasaki disease with blood parameters” — with some of the children testing positive for Covid-19.
- The urgent alert, sent to U.K. general practitioners by National Health Service England, warned that over the last three weeks, “there has been an apparent rise in the number of children of all ages presenting with a multisystem inflammatory state requiring intensive care across London and also in other regions of the U.K.,” the Health Service Journal first reported Monday.
- The alert added: “There is a growing concern that a [covid-19] related inflammatory syndrome is emerging in children in the U.K., or that there may be another, as yet unidentified, infectious pathogen associated with these cases.”
- In a statement to medical professionals who look after critically ill children, PICS said “the cases have in common overlapping features of toxic shock syndrome and atypical Kawasaki disease with blood parameters consistent with severe Covid-19 in children. Abdominal pain and gastrointestinal symptoms have been a common feature as has cardiac inflammation.”
- Kawasaki disease is a rare childhood illness that causes the walls of the blood vessels in the body to become inflamed.
- Health care professionals have reassured parents that the risk of children becoming severely ill with the virus remains low.
- “Thankfully Kawasaki-like diseases are very rare, as currently are serious complications in children related to Covid-19, but it is important that clinicians are made aware of any potential emerging links so that they are able to give children and young people the right care fast,” Professor Simon Kenny, NHS national clinical director for children and young people said in a statement sent to CNN.
- Dr. Tina Tan, professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said that the NHS England alert was important information to have in the United States.
“I think it’s really important that an alert like that goes out, not to alarm anybody but to have people be aware of the fact that this can happen. There have been an increased number of cases like this reported in Italy as well as Spain. Here in the US, I think we’re just starting to see it,” Tan told CNN Monday.
