[ad_1]
The number of very sick children admitted to New Orleans children’s hospital with Covid-19 has skyrocketed over the past two weeks – from zero to 20.
“I have never seen anything like it,” said Dr Mark Kline, the hospital’s chief medical officer. “We are seeing children getting sick that we just didn’t see in the first year of the pandemic, before the delta variant arrived.”
Complete Covid coverage-19 pandemic
Doctors at Orlando Health’s Arnold Palmer Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Children in Florida recently saw similar outbreaks. “Over the past two weeks, cases have continued to increase,” said Dr Federico Laham, the hospital’s medical director. “I don’t think we’ve reached our peak.”
Despite the dramatic increase in cases, Laham and other pediatric infectious disease experts nationwide told NBC News that there was as yet no hard evidence that the delta variant has turned the virus into anything. more dangerous thing in children.
“It’s too early to tell,” said Dr. Bernhard Wiedermann, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. delta is, in fact, more virulent in children than previous versions of the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working to determine whether the delta variant may, in fact, cause more serious illness in children, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a briefing Thursday.
She added that such research is complicated by the combination of increased cases and relaxed restrictions on masking and physical distancing. “The mitigation strategies that were used last summer, even in winter, have not been used in many of these areas where we are currently experiencing outbreaks,” Walenksy said.
Delta is a Doctor’s “Worst Nightmare”
What is evident now, experts say, is that flare-ups in pediatric cases are due to the hypertransmissibility of the variant, circulating in an unvaccinated population and therefore vulnerable to the virus.
“The reason more children are getting sick is simply because more children are getting sick,” said Dr. Paul Offit, vaccine researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s clearly increased contagiousness, not increased virulence.”
Children have always been sensitive to Covid-19. More than 4.1 million children have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, representing 14.3% of all cases, according to the latest data from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
From July 15 to 29, that percentage rose to 19% of reported cases each week.
“In the first year of this pandemic, the myth existed that children never got very sick from Covid,” Kline said. This was mainly because the number of pediatric cases was relatively low.
Because the delta variant is so contagious, he said, the increase in cases clearly shows the potential of the virus, even in otherwise healthy young children.
“This delta variant is an infectious disease specialist’s worst nightmare,” Kline said.
The rise in pediatric Covid cases comes as young people prepare to return to school in person – and in many areas, without the added protection of masks. Additionally, children’s hospitals have also been inundated with children with other respiratory viruses, such as severe colds, croup, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
“Even though Covid has flu-like symptoms, Covid is not the flu.
Dr Evan Anderson, pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Healthcare in Atlanta, has warned that the convergence of viruses could overwhelm already stretched pediatric hospital wards.
“Many children’s hospitals are pretty full during the usual winter months with the flu, RSV and other viral respiratory pathogens,” Anderson said. With a further increase in Covid-19, “there would be major concerns about hospital capacity.”
Kline agreed. “Children don’t have a lot of options for finding care if they have a serious illness or complex medical conditions,” he said. “Covid is filling beds that might otherwise be occupied by children with other medical conditions.”
The impact of increasing Covid-19 cases, coupled with other viruses, worries pediatricians like Dr. Natasha Burgert, national spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and medical practitioner in Overland Park, Kansas.
“We are starting to see children who have both Covid and RSV who are not doing well,” Burgert said. “I have no idea what will happen if they have Covid and the flu.”
While the flu can cause serious illness in children, and even lead to death, Burgert said the potential effects of Covid-19 are “beyond what the flu would ever do.”
“Even though Covid has flu-like symptoms, Covid is not the flu,” she said.
Burgert and his colleagues all point to the potential for children with Covid-19 to develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C.
Download the NBC News app for comprehensive coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic
This is when children develop dangerous inflammation around the heart and other organs, most often weeks after their initial infection. Often, patients do not know they have been infected before because their symptoms were either nonexistent or extremely mild.
When a child is diagnosed with the flu, they are clearly showing symptoms and doctors know they are on the lookout for complications. The potential of Covid to lead to MIS-C is different, as it blinds doctors and their young patients.
“It could be a child who looks absolutely fine and then three weeks later he’s in intensive care with organ failure,” said Dr. Nicole Baldwin, pediatrician in Cincinnati.
Laham, in Orlando, is bracing for such cases. “Once you have a surge of Covid activity in your community, we know that three to four weeks later we start to see children arriving at the hospital with MIS-C.”
Follow NBC HEALTH on Twitter & Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link