Children and Covid - scary please read

[hippohector]

I hope the link has worked. I just read this Evening Standard news article online.

I realise the government has not given a specific date for schools to reopen yet, but all the speculation seems to suggest the end of May/early June for Primary.

I hope Boris & co will take this into consideration and get all the facts before prematurely reopening schools...

apple.news/AUdpV9de6S8u5tfTleljTaA

Can’t see it, need to download an app to read it. What does it say?

This has been reported quite a lot. It’s a tiny risk, and they don’t actually know it’s linked to COVID

More than 40 children have been treated in a specialist London hospital for a "hyper inflammatory" new disease after apparently contracting coronavirus, the Standard has been told.
A "cluster" of cases has been detected in South-East London, focusing on Southwark and Woolwich.
One child, a 14-year-old boy with no underlying health problems, has died.
Doctors at Evelina London children's hospital say the disease is similar to Kawasaki disease, a rare inflammatory disease, and can cause major problems with the heart.
Hospitals across the country have been alerted by NHS England to what Evelina doctors, in an article in The Lancet medical journal, describe as a "new phenomenon" linked to coronavirus.
Dr Sara Hanna, the Evelina's medical director, told the Standard: "We probably saw the first case in the middle of March. We had a child admitted with something very like Kawasaki - a bit like something we call toxic shock syndrome.
"In the last two weeks, we have just seen this cluster of children where some of them look very like Kawasaki... they have a high persistent fever, they have got red eyes, they have got a rash, they have got swollen hands and feet."
She said blood tests were not detecting the virus in children but other indicators in the blood were "remarkably similar" to those seen in adults with Covid-19. Antibodies indicating recovery from the virus were later found in about half the children.
She said the timing of the outbreak in terms of a link to coronavirus made it "very suspicious". She said: "We can't say for certain it's related to the virus but it's difficult to understand how it wouldn't be."
The Lancet article reveals the first eight cases at the Evelina involved children aged between four and 14. Seven required ventilation.
Two tested positive for Covid-19, including the deceased teenager in a post mortem, but four of the eight were in households where a parent or grandparent was suspected or confirmed to have had the virus.
Six of the children were of Afro-Caribbean descent, one was Asian and one had Middle Eastern heritage.
Black and ethnic minority children make up the majority of the 40-plus cases but this may reflect the South East London population rather than suggest a genetic link.

It’s awful for the families involved, but 40 out of 2 million?
Not enough to shut down the economy for.
Although I do send my condolences to the families involved. Their loss is immeasurable.

It’s a tiny risk, and they don’t actually know it’s linked to COVID
I’d prefer it if they investigated it a bit more before they decide to reopen schools.

It might be 40 out of 2 million at the moment, but kids have largely been off school for the last 5 weeks.
I’m worried if they reopen schools we may sadly see the cases rise.
Maybe the government needs to give this more attention

Thus was in the news last week and I think spoken about widely on R4.

It's 'old' news OP

If schools go back how will they ensure that parents are social distancing at drop off/pick up?

What if parents need to work and rely on grandparents to collect? We don't have any after school clubs/breakfast clubs in our area so that would be another risk factor.

There are so many issues with opening schools too early in my opinion and I do think this is another reason.

Ok, but if it’s old news then why aren’t we being updated about what is being done to mitigate the risk to children. Reopening schools does not seem like a good idea until there is more data, surely?

Your child has more chance of being hit by a car. It’s negligible.

And very rare.

I think that does sound very worrying. I wonder how many children are in hospital on ventilators in normal times?

Have we been given a date and details of school reopening? If not then it's not something I will worry about at this point.

I’m really really concerned about levels of anxiety I’m seeing and hearing. We are bound to feel this way but some people I think will struggle with their MH now

No need to get personal and be rude theBelgranoSisters

This is worrying, and no, it isn't old news. Yesterday there was a new report which stated that the latest research showed there was most definitely a link to COVID-19, and that there are more of these cases coming to light. However, the report was in the Daily Fail online so many will be sceptical.

My own opinion is that this is a risk; numbers might be very small now but that's because schools have been closed and we've all been in lockdown. Opening primary schools so soon is really not a great idea right now. So many things have yet to be learned about COVID-19 - at first they said it was just a problem for the elderly who have underlying health issues, then it struck more and more people and we now know that younger folk can get it, as well as die from the virus. Now we know that males, some ethnic groups and those carrying extra weight can be at greater risk...what else are we going to find out in the near future? The cases of young children may be small right now but even just one death of a child is not worth the risk, particularly if it's your child....

Reopening schools may be a government decision but your own children returning is your personal decision. If schools are open from June, my own won’t return until September - if I think the science is strong enough. Public pressure won’t have any bearing on the decision.

It was at 24 when they last discussed it at the press briefing.

What is worrying about that study is all the children were in one area, Southwark and Woolwich, so 40 cases in that area, that is strange and concerning, I agree with OP and I dont have young school age children, but I would want more data before schools were opened

your own children returning is your personal decision

Hard truth, that. When we are in fight/flight mode, it is very hard to focus and suss out info for ourselves. Our brains are so tired. However, we need to fight through that. Get information from reliable sources. Weigh our risks. And then act.

Hope for the best!

I must admit this has been worrying me. One of my DC ended up hospitalised with transient synovitis (irritable hip) after having a viral illness. I'd never heard of it before and didn't realise that children can end up suffering from complications long after they've fought off a virus.

So, and forgive me for thinking out loud, clearly what those poor children have died from or been suffering with is very different to toxic or transient synovitis but I can see how it could be feasible that these new cases could also related to Covid-19 in some (same bit different) way IYSWIM.

I used to teach (primary) and yet have never knowingly taught a child who'd had transient synovitis and yet since my child had it I've heard of two others locally, all within a period of about two months. Maybe lots of children I know have had it though and I've just not been aware? I guess what I'm saying is it means these types of complications are rare but they do happen, and probably a lot closer to home than we'd be comfortable with if we knew the extent of it! It also makes me wonder if my child having suffered from 'complications' from a previous virus makes them more susceptible or more likely to suffer from these other life-threatening conditions if they were to catch Covid-19. For me that's a terrifying prospect.

www.today.com/today/amp/tdna180801

I got this link from a US friend, so this is happening everywhere. Really hope schools don't open till they get to bottom of this.

It's not really old news. The UK was very much in the vanguard of identifying these clusters, which had also been seen but not much researched in other European countries. At the time, the US was not really aware of the phenomenon, but since last week has identified clusters of its own in most major cities, including a particularly large one in New York. But the UK is at the cutting edge of the research and as the dataset gets gradually larger it will be easier to start drawing some inferences.

As the clinician quoted in OP's pasted text states, it's very hard to see that this is not Covid-related, and while rare is already less rare this week than last (!) simply because it's being recognised for what it is. I am not sure that it should feed directly into decisionmaking about reopening schools, but I do think that a revision of this bromide that children can't/don't get it/pass it on/have bad outcomes is long overdue, and that is something that needs proper consideration before the rush to reopen schools gathers momentum.