The death of three children due to inflammatory complications possibly linked to the new coronavirus in New York City has brought Andrew Cuomo, the state's governor, to alert of an entirely different chapter of a disease that had been believed to cause only bland symptoms to children.
On Friday, Cuomo reported the first death of a five-year-old boy. At a press conference on Saturday, the number of fatalities has been raised to three, after the death of a teenager and a seven-year old.
Cuomon said the illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorker and that the disease is new and developing.
Last week, state health authorities of New York City have reported 73 cases of children falling extremely ill with a toxic shock-like reaction that exhibits symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease.
Cuomo articulated many of the children did not show respiratory symptoms, which are commonly associated with the new coronavirus when they were brought to the hospitals, but all of them were tested positive either for the virus or its antibodies.
At least 85 of such cases in children were found across the US with a majority in New York, which has the highest recorded number of Covid-19 cases in the US.
According to Cuomo, when he announced the first child fatality, they thought children could be vehicles of transmission but they did not think children would suffer from it. He described the development of the disease as really painful news.
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Kawasaki disease, which mostly affects children under five, can cause the immune system to go into overdrive, which causes fever, rashes, severe diarrhea, and conjunctivitis. In more severe cases it can inflame the walls of the arteries, which affects the blood flow to the heart and is possibly fatal.
On Monday, New York City reported 15 patients aged between 2 and 15 had been admitted over the past three weeks with the new coronavirus-related syndrome. The first recorded fatality from the new illness in the US was the death of a five-year-old boy. A case has been reported along with a team at California's Stanford children's hospital.
In the UK, a 14-year-old boy died due to the new illness and some cases in Europe were detailed in a published report. Experts reported that cardiac inflammation, abdominal pain, and gastrointestinal symptoms were common to the cases.
In a press release through the American Heart Association, the director of Kawasaki program at Boston children's hospital Dr. Jane Newburger, attested that a number of children developed serious inflammatory syndrome with the new coronavirus are often hospitalized.
Newburger said they want to reassure parents that the disease appears to be uncommon, while the Kawasaki disease can damage the heart or blood vessels, the heart problems usually disappear in five or six weeks, and most children fully recover.
Moreover, Newburger uttered that rarely, but sometimes, the coronary artery damage persists, and because of this, Kawasaki diseases are the most common disease in the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed countries. She added that immediate treatment is critical to avert significant heart problems.
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