UK says some children have died from COVID-19-related syndrome

LONDON (Reuters) – Some children in the UK with no underlying health conditions have died of a rare inflammatory syndrome that researchers believe is related to COVID-19, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Tuesday.

British and Italian medical experts are investigating a possible link between the coronavirus pandemic and clusters of severe inflammatory diseases among newborns arriving at the hospital with high fever and inflamed arteries.

Doctors in northern Italy, one of the most affected areas in the world during the pandemic, have reported an extraordinarily large number of children under the age of 9 with severe cases of what appears to be Kawasaki disease, most common in parts of Asia.

“There are some children who died who did not have underlying health problems,” Hancock told LBC Radio.

“It is a new disease that we believe may be caused by the coronavirus and the COVID-19 virus, we are not 100% sure because some of the people who contracted it did not test positive, so we are investigating a lot now but it is something that we worries “.

Until now, children were thought to be much less susceptible than their parents or grandparents to the more deadly complications caused by the new coronavirus, although the mysterious inflammatory disease noted in Britain, Spain and Italy may require further evaluation.

“It is rare, although very significant for children who have it, the number of cases is small,” said Hancock, one of the ministers who led Britain’s COVID-19 response.

He did not give an exact figure for the number of deaths.

Kawasaki disease, the cause of which is unknown, is associated with fever, rashes, inflammation of the glands, and, in severe cases, inflammation of the arteries of the heart.

Britain’s National Health Service says the syndrome only affects about eight out of every 100,000 children each year, and most of them are under the age of 5.

There is some evidence that individuals may inherit a predisposition to the disease, but the pattern is unclear.

Children who tested positive for COVID-19 or its antibodies have had gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea in the past two weeks, the Spanish Pediatric Association said Monday.

Although the children were in good health, their condition could evolve in a matter of hours in shock, with tachycardia and hypotension even without fever.

Most cases were detected in schoolchildren or adolescents, and sometimes overlapped with Kawasaki disease or toxic shock syndrome (TSS).

Parents should be vigilant, said British Home Secretary Victoria Atkins.

“It shows how fast this virus moves and how unprecedented in its effect,” Atkins told Sky News.

Professor Anne Marie Rafferty, president of the Royal College of Nursing, said she had heard reports of the similarity between cases in babies and Kawasaki syndrome.

“Actually, very little is known about it and the numbers at the moment are really too small,” Sky News said. “But it is an alert, and it is something that is actually being explored and examined by several different researchers.”