COVID-19 Believed to Also Target Heart and Kidneys of Children

(Photo : REUTERS/Andrew Kelly)
A New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer sits beside an art piece titled "-ThAnK YoU-" by Benat Iglesias Lopez and his four-year-old son Teo which was made to thank frontline workers, outside Central Park during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., May 9, 2020.

On Sunday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that three children from New York have died and 73 have become severely ill with an inflammatory disease linked to the new coronavirus. The disease, pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, has similar symptoms to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock.

Governor Cuomo on Friday reported the first death of a five-year-old boy. The number of deaths has raised to three after a seven-year-old and a teenager died reported at a press conference on Saturday.

Dr. Howard Zucker, New York health commissioner, said two children who died were of primary school age, the third was an adolescent, and they were from three different countries and had no known underlying medical concerns. Several states have reported similar cases.

According to Governor Cuomo, the disease is new and developing and has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers.

Governor Cuomo articulated that a lot of the children did not show respiratory symptoms, which are associated with Covid-19 when they were initially brought to the hospitals, but they all tested positive either for the virus or its antibodies.

At least 85 similar cases in children were found across US with New York having the majority of the cases.

New York City reported on Monday that 15 patients aged between 2 and 15 had been hospitalized over the past three weeks with the symptoms of the new coronavirus-related syndrome. The first known fatality from the new illness in the US was the death of a five-year-old boy. A case has been taken down with a team at California's Stanford children's hospital.

Last week, New York City health officials have alerted about the disease, but health workers were warned on May 1 after hearing of reports from Britain. Prolonged high fever, rash, severe abdominal pain, and racing hearts are the common symptoms of the disease.

Dr. David Reich, president of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, uttered the five cases his hospital handled initially had gastrointestinal issues and developed to expanded blood pressure, very low blood pressure, and in several cases, heart failure. He said they first thought the disease only kills old people and not kids.

Children do not only struggle with arterial inflammation. According to a report, for a virus believed to primarily destroy the lungs, the new coronavirus also attacks the heart, disrupting its critical rhythm, and weakening its muscles. The disease savages kidneys badly causing some hospitals to run short of dialysis equipment. It creeps along the nervous system, deteriorating taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It also creates blood clots that can kill.

Several scientists now believe the new coronavirus wreaks chaos in the body through some combination of an attack on blood vessels, possibly the endothelial cells, which line the blood vessels, and cytokine storms, when the immune system becomes haywire.

Dr. Mandeep Mehra at Harvard Medical School in a report said their hypothesis is that the new coronavirus disease begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus.