Mysterious coronavirus-related syndrome that has emerged recently pushing up the numbers dramatically has kept doctors across the United Kingdom on their toes. The new coronavirus-related syndrome affecting children and the reason still remains unclear.
The alert sent out by the NHS reveals that children are showing three new symptoms which include abdominal pain, cardiac inflammation and gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhoea and vomiting.
All of these symptoms are multi-system inflammatory and can be lethal to children as their bodies cannot sustain the pain. The alert sent out by the NHS read, "(In the) last three weeks, there has been an apparent rise in the number of children of all ages presenting with a multisystem inflammatory state requiring intensive care across London and also in other regions of the UK. There is a growing concern that a (Covid-19) related inflammatory syndrome is emerging in children in the UK, or that there may be another, as yet unidentified, infectious pathogen associated with these cases."
Britian's Health Secretary is very worried
Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in Britain said: "I'm very worried about the early signs that in rare cases, there is an impact of an auto-immune response in children that causes a significant disease. It's a new disease that we think may be caused by coronavirus and the COVID-19 virus."
All children who displayed the new symptoms were tested for Covid-19 and some of them were positive and the others were negative. The results has baffled the NHS and Matt Hancock has stressed for more research into the findings. ''We're doing a lot of research now. What I would also stress is that it is rare. Although it is very significant for those children who do get it, the number of cases is small.''
Is the virus-syndrome Covid-19-related or something else?
The National Medical Director for NHS England, Stephen Powis revealed that it was "too early to say" whether the new disease was linked to coronavirus and stressed on the fact that the issue is being looked into urgently. However, England's Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, said that it was "entirely plausible" for the symptoms to be linked with COVID-19.
Russell Viner, President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health revealed that though children did not majorly suffer from Covid-19, there might be new diseases related to it that's taking us all by surprise.
He said that earlier, children appeared to be the part of the population least affected by this infection. However, new diseases may present in ways that surprise doctors and clinicians who need to be aware of any emerging evidence of particular symptoms or of underlying conditions which could make a patient more vulnerable to the virus, he noted.
