FRANKFORT, Ky. — A 10-year-old child in Kentucky is critically ill on a ventilator with the coronavirus and a baffling syndrome.
Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday it is the first child in the state experiencing this mysterious complication. Other cities, like New York, are seeing children with increasing cases attacking the immune system.
As Beshear made the announcement, he expressed it was difficult news to share, also asking for a moment of silence.
"This is one where we're gonna kind have to breathe through," he said. "Let's just take a minute and everybody do what your heart tells you to do to help, pray, think about, this kiddo."
Out of protection for the child's family, Beshear didn't share any other details, like where the child is from or their gender.
"It's too early to jump to any conclusions about numbers, about rate or about anything else," Beshear said.
The child appears to have a mysterious inflammatory syndrome caused from having COVID-19.
In New York City, 93 children so far are known to have the illness and at least three deaths of children have been linked from complications.
"For kids who get this syndrome, it's serious," Dr. Stack, Kentucky's Public Health Commissioner, said.
Dr. Stack said the illness causes children's immune systems to become overactive and then have an extensive inflammatory response in their bodies.
"In these individuals, I think what we have seen, is that some of them can have a respiratory problem, others can have a gastrointestinal problem," Dr. Stack said. "The inflammation goes out of control and then it hits the child's body overall and then they have a lot more problems."
In Louisville, these symptoms were discussed just last week. Dr. Kristina Bryant, a Norton Children's pediatric infectious disease expert, said the symptoms of the rare COVID-related illness resemble a disease called Kawasaki.
"Multiple children's hospitals in the U.S., primarily in the Northeast, have been reporting groups of children who have been admitted with this multi-system hyper-inflammatory state," Dr. Bryant said. "Kawasaki disease is a vasculitis, so it's inflammation of the blood vessels."
Dr. Bryant said there's no test for Kawasaki disease, but children around the country are appearing to have a "classic" case of the illness. These same children turn out to have recently had the coronavirus
She said the symptoms of Kawasaki disease include at least five days of fever, red eyes without drainage, cracked lips, and swollen hands or feet.
Both Dr. Bryant and Dr. Stack said most kids who do get COVID-19 have only mild symptoms.
"For those of you who are parents, you should still take great comfort that children overall do extraordinarily well with this and don't have serious illness," Dr. Stack said.
"When a child in our community gets a fever, it is much more likely to be another virus than COVID-19," Dr. Bryant said.
They both also addressed that the concern form many is that doctors unfortunately don't know much yet about the inflammatory illness children with COVID-19 are experiencing.
"There's not much you can do to prevent this," Dr. Stack said. "There's just a lot we don't know about it yet, unfortunately."
Contact reporter Tyler Emery at temery@WHAS11.com. Follow her on Twitter (@TylerWHAS11) and Facebook.
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