COVID-19 (coronavirus) was initially believed to put mostly older people and those with underlying conditions at the most risk. As this pandemic has developed, younger people have begun falling victim to the virus more frequently and a new illness linked to COVID-19 has started popping up everywhere.
What We Know:
- 15-year-old Dar’yana Dyson, died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore over the weekend of a pediatric inflammatory disease that the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) now believes may be associated with COVID-19.
- Several health departments across the country and the world are reporting cases of a mysterious respiratory illness in children, teens, and young adults that has sickened most and led to death in others.
- This new disease now officially goes by the name Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) and has been reported in over 100 cases in New York City, three of which have been fatal. It has some similarities to Kawasaki syndrome, a rare illness. Many of the kids diagnosed in New York City cases have been Black or Hispanic.
- Dyson’s mother, Kandace Knight, said she is stunned by how quickly her daughter deteriorated from what at first seemed like a simple illness.
- “It happened so fast. I never thought that taking my daughter to the hospital for a stomach pain that I wouldn’t be walking out of there with her,” Knight told WBAL-TV.
Knight says her daughter complained of stomach pain and was running a fever, then developed a rash typical of Kawasaki and the related illness. Doctors are still unsure if there is a direct correlation between the illness and the COVID-19 virus, as some children have tested positive for the virus and or the antibodies, but others have not.
