On Friday, Los Angeles County health officials reported nine more cases of the pediatric disease known as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, or MIS-C. The new cases raised the total number of children in LA diagnosed with the rare but serious condition to 25.
No deaths have been reported in the province due to the condition, which affects children who either had COVID-19 or were exposed there. The disease causes inflammation of body parts including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, eyes or gastrointestinal organs, which sometimes result in lifelong health effects.
Health officials are still trying to learn what causes the syndrome and how it can best be treated.
Some data points from the US Centers for Disease Control:
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-Most cases occur in children between 1 and 14 years of age, with an average age of 8 years.
-Fallings have occurred in children from 1 year to 20 years old.
-More than 70 percent of the reported cases occurred in children who are Hispanic / Latino or Non-Hispanic Black.
-99 percent of cases tested positive for SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The remaining 1 percent were around someone with COVID-19.
-Most children develop MIS-C 2-4 weeks after infection with SARS-CoV-2.
-Light more than half of the reported cases were male.
In LA, 28 percent of cases were between the ages of 0 and 5 years old, 44 percent were between the ages of 6 and 12 years old, and 28 percent were between the ages of 13 and 20 years old. The majority of the cases – 68 percent – were Latino / Latinx.
Nationally, the CDC has received reports of 694 confirmed cases of MIS-C and 11 deaths in 42 states.
MIS-C is described by the CDC as occurring in people younger than 21 years of age who present with ‘fever, laboratory evidence of inflammation and evidence of clinically serious disease requiring hospitalization, with multisystem organ involvement (cardiac, renal, respiratory, hematological, gastrointestinal, dermatological or neurological). ”
Patients should be positive for current or recent SARS-CoV-2 infection by RT-PCR, serology, or antigen test; as COVID-19 exposure within 4 weeks prior to onset of symptoms.
There should also be no other plausible diagnosis.
The news of the MIS-C infections comes as children begin returning to school and a day later Southern California saw its first pediatric death related to COVID-19. On Thursday, a teenage girl with major underlying medical conditions died in Orange County.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, three people aged 18 to 24 have died from coronavirus complications in Orange County, but this was the first death of a person under 18. While its total deaths from the virus are much greater, Los Angeles has County has not seen deaths from people under 18, but health officials say children between the ages of 0 and 4 now have the second-highest rate per 100,000 people of any cohort of age, at just over 20.
She becomes the second person under the age of 18 to die from the virus in the state.
The first was a teenage boy from the Central Valley in late July.
LA public health officials confirmed Friday 46 new deaths and 1,759 new cases of COVID-19. Of the new cases reported by the Department of Public Health, 72 percent occurred in people under the age of 50 years old.
To date, Los Angeles has identified 229,054 positive cases of COVID-19 in all areas of the County. The region has experienced a total of 5,491 COVID-related deaths. Test results are available to nearly 2,154,000 individuals with 10 per cent of all people testing positive.
