In a press briefing, Governor Andrew Cuomo said three children in New York have passed away from a rare inflammatory syndrome believed to be linked to Covid-19.
73 similar cases in the state are being investigated by health authorities. According to reports, children have shown symptoms similar to toxic shock-like syndrome or Kawasaki disease.
“The priority for us today is dealing with a new issue that has come up which is truly disturbing and that is the issue that the coronavirus may effect young people. Very young people, that is infants, children in elementary school,” Cuomo said.
“One of the few rays of good news was young people were not affected [by coronavirus]. We’re not so sure that is the fact anymore,” he added. “This is the last thing that we need at this time.”
The Governor had revealed that a 5-year-old was the first child in the state to ‘appear to die’ from the rare inflammatory condition.
Staff at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, where the child – who was diagnosed with coronavirus – received treatment, confirmed the death.
The increasing number of cases is now defying previous beliefs that children are less susceptible to complications from novel coronavirus.
“These are children who come in and who don’t present the symptoms that we normally find familiar with COVID-19,” Cuomo said.
“It’s not a respiratory illness, they not in respiratory distress. I think that’s one of the reasons why this is getting discovered so far into the process, it’s more of an inflammation of the blood vessels which can then cause problems with the heart.”
Cuomo also said that the NY Department of Health will be working with the NY Genome Center and the Rockfeller University.
“These children happen to have the COVID-19 antibodies or be positive for COVID-19 but these were not the symptoms they showed when they came into the hospital system,” he added.
New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus in the US with 345,406 cases and 26,812 deaths as of May 11.
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