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The death of three children in New York from possibly Covid-19-related inflammatory complications has prompted Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, to warn of “an entirely different chapter” of a disease believed to cause mild symptoms in children. .
The governor reported the first death, of a five-year-old boy, on Friday. At his morning press conference on Saturday, Cuomo raised the death toll to three, after the death of a seven-year-old boy and a teenager.
“The disease has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers,” said Cuomo. “This is new. This is developing.”
State health authorities said last week that 73 cases have been reported in New York of children becoming seriously ill with a toxic reaction similar to shock showing symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease.
Cuomo said many of the children did not show respiratory symptoms commonly associated with Covid-19 when they were taken to area hospitals, but all tested positive for either the virus or its antibodies.
NBC News found at least 85 such cases in children in the United States. USA With a majority in New York State, it also had the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the country.
“We thought that children could be transmission vehicles … but we did not think that children would suffer from that,” Cuomo said when he announced the first infant death. He described the development as “really painful news.”
Kawasaki disease, which primarily affects children under the age of five, can cause the immune system to “overdrive”, causing fever, severe diarrhea, rashes, and conjunctivitis. In more severe cases, it can inflame the walls of the arteries, affecting blood flow to the heart, and is life-threatening.
New York City reported Monday that 15 patients ages 2 to 15 had been hospitalized in the past three weeks with Covid-related syndrome. The death of the five-year-old boy marks the first fatality of the new disease in the United States. Seattle has reported a case along with a team at California’s Stanford Children’s Hospital.
A 14-year-old boy in the UK also died of the new disease; and several cases in Europe were detailed in a report published in The Lancet. Experts reported that abdominal pain, gastrointestinal symptoms, and heart inflammation were common in the cases.
In a press release through the American Heart Association, Dr. Jane Newburger, director of the Kawasaki program at Boston Children’s Hospital, confirmed that a small number of children developed severe inflammatory syndrome with Covid-19, which often led to hospitalization.
“We want to reassure parents; this seems to be rare. While Kawasaki disease can damage the heart or blood vessels, heart problems usually go away in five to six weeks, and most children make a full recovery, “Newburger said.
“Rarely, but sometimes, coronary artery damage persists. Because of this, Kawasaki disease is the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed countries. Timely treatment is critical to prevent significant heart problems. “
