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The San Matteo Polyclinic of Pavia has announced the publication of a study according to which the Coronavirus was found in the tears of an eleven-year-old boy. This is the first pediatric case in the world in which Covid-19 has been found in an eye sample from a patient, as published in the European Journal of Ophthalmology. The boy is a patient at the San Matteo pediatric clinic who had to undergo medical investigations after prolonged contact with a coronavirus-positive relative.
Coronavirus found in the tears of an 11-year-old boy
According to Gianluigi Marseglia, director of the San Matteo pediatric ward, “the patient was asymptomatic, without cough, fever, fatigue, sore throat or diarrhea, and there were no signs of respiratory infection.” Only later, “the child’s blood tests showed a slight increase in transaminase values and the ultrasound examination of the lung showed a slight pleural irregularity, associated with mild interstitial disease.” For this reason, Marseglia continued, the eleven-year-old girl “underwent a nasopharyngeal smear, which later tested positive for Covid-19.” Therefore, the baby was put under observation and, a few days after the discovery of its positivity, presented ocular symptoms that, although mild, led the doctors to request an ophthalmological evaluation. The results gave no evidence of conjunctivitis or keratitis, but a conjunctival swab gave a positive result: “Identification of Sars-CoV-2 in an eye sample from a pediatric patient with Covid-19 showed that the virus could be detected in conjunctival samples not only in adults but also in children ”, declared Luciano Quaranta, director of Ophthalmology of San Matteo, thus certifying the first case of ocular positivity in Covid in a pediatric patient in the world. The conclusions of the study affirm that“ this is the first case of identification of SARS-Cov-2 RNA in the eyeball of a pediatric patient without any eye disease. However, although transmission by tears is possible, it has not yet been clear whether this can be considered a new way of spreading the Covid-19 infection. “
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