MACON, Ga. — Right now, health experts in Atlanta are investigating if a rare illness in young children is associated with COVID-19.
Nearly 100 kids and teenagers across the nation have developed symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and other inflammatory diseases.
13WMAZ asked Dr. Lance Slade, a Macon pediatrician, to explain what symptoms you should look for, how it ties to the coronavirus, and how it's treated.
“It's a clinically diagnosed syndrome where you have a fever for five days or more, and then you have four or five more symptoms,” Slade said.
Those symptoms could be anything from ongoing fever to strawberry tongue, pink eye or a hand rash from lymphoid swelling.
“Kids in rare instances are showing up [with something] like Kawasaki syndrome, but with COVID being the likely source…so it's rare, but it is happening,” Slade said.
But what is the course of treatment in a medical setting for a multi-inflammatory syndrome?
“They’re going to be in the hospital. They'll get hemoglobin therapy. A cardiologist is going to check their heart with an ultrasound or echo cardiogram,” said Slade. “Then they'll be put on a low dose aspirin and follow it clinically to make sure they don't have any coronary artery inflammation long term, and then clinically they usually get better.”
According to a spokesperson for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, experts are "evaluating a very small number of cases of children exhibiting Kawasaki-like symptoms and inflammation to determine if those patients may have also had COVID-19 and to investigate if any association might exist."
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