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(Reuters) – Three children in New York died of a rare inflammatory syndrome believed to be linked to the new coronavirus, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Saturday, a development that may portend a pandemic risk for very young children.
Cuomo had revealed on Friday the death of a 5-year-old boy related to the coronavirus and a syndrome that shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease, which was the first known fatality related to the rare disease in New York.
The governor said in a daily briefing on Saturday that the disease had claimed the lives of at least three young people across the state. He did not provide details of their ages or the circumstances of their deaths.
But Cuomo said he was increasingly concerned that the syndrome posed an emerging risk to children, who were previously widely considered immune to serious illnesses caused by COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.
He said state health officials were reviewing 73 cases in which children exposed to COVID-19 also exhibited symptoms of the syndrome, which he said included inflammation of the blood vessels, which in turn could cause heart problems.
Cuomo said the children tested positive for COVID-19 or the antibodies against it, “but those were not the symptoms they showed when they entered the hospital system.”
Calling it a “truly disturbing” development, the governor said people had been working under the impression that young people were not at risk for the coronavirus.
“We are no longer so sure that that is the fact,” he said. “It is very possible that this has been going on for several weeks and has not been diagnosed as COVID related.”
Cuomo said the New York Department of Health partnered with the New York Genome Center and Rockefeller University to determine if there is a genetic basis for the syndrome, the cases of which were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain.
And he said that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had asked New York to develop national criteria to identify and respond to the syndrome.
The syndrome shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease, which is associated with fever, rashes, swollen glands, and, in severe cases, inflammation of the arteries of the heart. Scientists are still trying to determine if the syndrome is related to the new coronavirus because not all children with it have tested positive for the virus.
New York is the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, accounting for more than a third of the 77,313 American deaths from COVID-19, according to a Reuters count.
Cuomo said 226 New Yorkers died from COVID-19 on Friday, up from 216 a day earlier, but less than half the levels recorded two weeks ago. He said hospitalizations and intubations continued their downward trend, further evidence that the state has obtained a measure of control over the virus.
In a separate briefing, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said 166 additional residents of his state had died in the past 24 hours from COVID-19, bringing the total deaths to 9,116, while the total number of cases increased from 1,759 to 137,085.
On a positive note, Murphy said the number of people hospitalized for the disease continued to decline, with the 422 patients discharged in the past 24 hours, outnumbering the 364 newly admitted for treatment.
However, Murphy cautioned against complacency and said his constituents should continue to practice social distancing.
“We are not out of the woods, folks. Let’s not forget that,” he said in the briefing.
For the chart on monitoring the new coronavirus in the US. USA:
https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-USA/0100B5K8423/index.html
For the Reuters online site for coronavirus:
https://www.reuters.com/live-events/coronavirus-6-id2921484
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Edited by Daniel Wallis)
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