COVID 19. - In Children

COVID 19. -  In Children

A commonly held view is that kids are mostly immune to COVID 19 or that they seldom have very serious symptoms if they show any.

The view has merit.  Fifty percent of the children who have been tested did not have symptoms.  No other age group got off so easy.

While that appears to be good news for children, that is bad news for their families.  The child with no symptoms is still carrying the virus and can infect family members once it has become infected.  Thus it is a very good reason to keep all children close to home and not out where they may catch the virus.

Schools and playgrounds where children mix and mingle are just as dangerous during the COVID 19 pandemic as they are for spreading flu and colds during their seasons.  If there is a new sickness in town, the children spread it and take it back home with them.  

So until there is an effective vaccine or an effective medicine, no community should open its schools.

But there is now a new manifestation of the COVID 19 virus in children.  Weeks after children may have been an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, it now appears they can become very sick and die.  It may take that long for the disease to reach a critical point where it can attack the blood vessel walls and other tissues that cause the child to have the following symptoms:

persistent fever and inflammation, 

abnormal and rapid heart beat,

rash,

severe abdominal pain,

diarrhea and vomiting, 

weak pulse and rapid breathing

dizziness or loss of consciousness

If a child has any of these symptoms, medical help should be sought.  There are medicines that have been effective in helping to counter the effects of the virus.  

The disease was called "Pediatric Multi-Symptom Inflammatory Syndrome" before its tie to COVID 19 was discovered.  It is very similar to Kawasaki's Disease for which medicines have been found to help the sick child recover.  

I have no percentages of how many children who were originally infected by COVID 19 virus get this PMIS Disease.  So far, it appears to be only a small number.  But children all over the world are getting sick with this offshoot.  It may be a mutation that has happened in the virus or, more likely, it is a characteristic of the virus in children with certain pre-conditions.  But the discovery of this outbreak is so recent that there is very little else known about it.  Watch for more information in the near future.

(I am not a medically trained person but I seek to pass along the best available new ideas and experiences with the COVID 19 virus that I find in the news.)