At least 15 states are looking into cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome mainly affecting children and believed to be linked to the novel coronavirus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday.
Cuomo told reporters at a press conference that state health officials are investigating 102 cases, including dozens of hospitalizations.
The disorder, dubbed ‘Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Potentially Associated with COVID-19,’ can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.
So far, three children in New York have died from the condition, including a five-year-old boy, a seven-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman.
Now, 14 other states, including California, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have reported cases in addition to five European countries.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday (pictured) that 15 states in total are investigating cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome mainly affecting children and believed to be linked to coronavirus
There at least 102 cases in New York of ‘Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Potentially Associated with COVID-19,’ can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries. Pictured: Josie Paskvan, nine, of Detroit, and Bobby Dean, nine, of New York, who both contracted the syndrome
‘We have lost three children in New York because of this. A five-year-old boy, a seven-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl,’ Cuomo said on Wednesday.
‘These cases are all across the state, predominantly where the population is.’
The majority of cases in New York, about 29 percent, have occurred in children between ages five and nine, according to state data.
Roughly 23 percent of cases are in children under age five, around 28 percent are in children between ages 10 and 14, and 20 percent in those between ages 15 and 21.
About 60 percent of the 102 New York cases tested positive for the coronavirus with 70 percent requiring ICU admission and almost 20 percent needing intubation.
At least three children have died and New York is now requiring hospitals to report any cases to the state’s health department
‘These are children who come in who don’t present the symptoms that we normally are familiar with with COVID,’ Cuomo said.
‘It’s not a respiratory illness, they’re not in respiratory distress. I think that’s one of the reasons why this may be getting discovered this far into the process.’
Cases of rare, life-threatening inflammatory illnesses in children associated with exposure to COVID-19 were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain.
However, now doctors across the US are starting to report clusters of kids with the disorder,
This emerging syndrome, which may occur days to weeks after a COVID-19 illness, reflects the surprising ways that this entirely new coronavirus infects and sickens its human hosts.
Scientists are still trying to determine whether the syndrome is linked with the new coronavirus as not all children have tested positive for the virus.
The syndrome shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease, which is associated with fever, skin rashes, swelling of glands, and, in the most severe cases, inflammation of arteries of the heart.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and other groups to gather data to better understand and characterize the syndrome, according to an emailed statement.
The aim is to develop a case definition that would allow the CDC to track the cases and advise doctors on how to care for these patients.
Not every child that has developed the condition has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, but enough have for doctors to believe the conditions are linked.
For most children, COVID-19 is mild, and children are far less likely to be hospitalized with the disease than adults, according to the CDC.
‘Children seem to laugh off COVID-19 most of the time,’ said Dr Jane Newburger, a pediatric cardiologist at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital.
‘But rarely, a child will develop this hyper-inflammatory state.’
Newburger said there appears to be a spectrum of illnesses, with some children coming in ‘very sick, even in shock.’ Most have a fever and impaired function in one or more organs.
Some children get sick very fast and need to be in a pediatric intensive care unit, while others can be cared for in a regular hospital ward, she said.
